Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin never stopped remembering and loving his homeland. He was always keen on his family’s history, his parents’ place of birth. It is no coincidence that in 1901 he made a trip to the Vyatka Governorate in hopes of finding his father’s home.
Vast Russian expanses, fields, forests, rivers — this was the land where the parents of the future great singer, Ivan Yakovlevich Chaliapin and Evdokiya Mikhailovna Prozorova were born. Evdokiya was a peasant from the village of Dudintsy, Kirov Oblast. Unfortunately, no existing portrait of her remains. “She was a simple Russian woman, of which there are many in Russia: small frame, soft face, gray eyes, brown hair, always combed straight, very modest, inconspicuous, ” Feodor Chaliapin wrote about her in his memoirs.
But the image of Ivan Yakovlevich Chaliapin survived as a photograph taken in Vyatka at the very beginning of the 1900s by the famous local photographer Sergei Alexandrovich Lobovikov. Feodor Ivanovich cherished this photo and never parted with it. He often put it in front of him in a frame or carried it in a travel bag while on tour. In 1915, Chaliapin, who loved to draw, made a drawing of this photograph and gave it to his eleven–year–old son Boris.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin in his memoirs said that Chaliapin showed him this photo, saying:
Vast Russian expanses, fields, forests, rivers — this was the land where the parents of the future great singer, Ivan Yakovlevich Chaliapin and Evdokiya Mikhailovna Prozorova were born. Evdokiya was a peasant from the village of Dudintsy, Kirov Oblast. Unfortunately, no existing portrait of her remains. “She was a simple Russian woman, of which there are many in Russia: small frame, soft face, gray eyes, brown hair, always combed straight, very modest, inconspicuous, ” Feodor Chaliapin wrote about her in his memoirs.
But the image of Ivan Yakovlevich Chaliapin survived as a photograph taken in Vyatka at the very beginning of the 1900s by the famous local photographer Sergei Alexandrovich Lobovikov. Feodor Ivanovich cherished this photo and never parted with it. He often put it in front of him in a frame or carried it in a travel bag while on tour. In 1915, Chaliapin, who loved to draw, made a drawing of this photograph and gave it to his eleven–year–old son Boris.
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin in his memoirs said that Chaliapin showed him this photo, saying:
