The cabinet grand piano was made in Saint Petersburg, tuned in Moscow, and restored in Kazan, where it occupies the center of the “Feodor Chaliapin and Kazan” exhibition. For thirty years, this instrument was in Feodor Chaliapin’s residence in Moscow and witnessed all his rehearsals, improvisations, and home concerts.

At this piano, Feodor Chaliapin studied music theory and harmony with Sergei Rachmaninoff and rehearsed arias, romances, and his favorite folk songs. In the evenings, Rachmaninoff played parts from the ballet “The Nutcracker” on this grand piano and accompanied the choir of Mamontov’s Moscow Private Opera and Siebel’s aria from “Faust” to the painter Konstantin Korovin, who was also the singer’s friend.

The patron of the arts Savva Mamontov was the first to notice Chaliapin’s great talent: he invited the singer to his opera and gave him complete freedom of choice in costumes and repertoire. In his memoirs “Man and Mask”, Chaliapin recalled

Feodor Chaliapin had four successful seasons at the Mamontov Opera and gained true fame. He brilliantly performed the roles of Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godunov and Salieri, while rehearsing the role of Mephistopheles, which would bring the singer triumph at the Italian La Scala Theater.

Back then, the black grand piano was standing in the foyer of the Solodovnikov Theater, where Savva Mamontov’s Moscow Private Opera was located. In January 1898, there was a great fire in the theater; luckily, the instrument was evacuated before anything happened to it.

Savva Mamontov gave the grand piano to Feodor Chaliapin. The instrument stayed with the Chaliapin family for many years, moving from place to place with them. After Chaliapin emigrated, the piano was left in his house on Novinsky Boulevard in Moscow and later given to the daughter of the family’s dressmaker.

The grand piano was donated to the museum in 1968 by Iole Tornaghi, the singer’s first wife, and their eldest daughter Irina Chaliapina. At the end of the Khrushchev Thaw, the Chaliapin Room was established in the singer’s hometown — the first exhibition in the USSR dedicated to Feodor Chaliapin, whose history and legacy had long been banned by Soviet propaganda.