“Among the Italian ballerinas was one I was infatuated with,” Feodor Chaliapin wrote in the book “Pages from My Life” about his wife Iole Tornaghi. “She danced marvelously, better than all the ballerinas of the Imperial Theaters…”
Iole Ignazio Lo Presti Tornaghi was born in Monza, Italy in 1873 to a family of a ballet dancer and a baron. She dreamed of becoming a ballerina since she was a child and entered the ballet school at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan at the age of nine. In addition to her studies, Iole also participated in crowd scenes on stage as a dancer. She made her debut as a prima ballerina in 1890 at the age of 16.
Chaliapin’s first wife later distinguished herself on the world’s finest stages. In Venice, at the Teatro La Fenice, where Iole played the leading part in the ballet “Coppélia” by Léo Delibes, she was noticed by Savva Mamontov, a major Russian entrepreneur and owner of the Moscow Private Opera, who then invited her to go on tour to Nizhny Novgorod.
It was there that Iole met Chaliapin, who was also touring. Although Iole did not speak a word of Russian and Chaliapin did not know Italian, they fell in love instantly and got married on August 10, 1898. After the ceremony, Iole Tornagi worked for two more seasons. She staged ballet scenes in the operas “Khovanshchina”, “Sadko” (in 1897 — a serpentine dance in the underwater kingdom during the wedding ceremony of Volkhova and Sadko), and “Prince Igor”; she played Swanilda in “Coppélia” and also performed as a soloist in opera productions.
She was addressed as Iola Ignatyevna and turned out to be an excellent hostess. Her son Feodor recalled,
Iole Ignazio Lo Presti Tornaghi was born in Monza, Italy in 1873 to a family of a ballet dancer and a baron. She dreamed of becoming a ballerina since she was a child and entered the ballet school at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan at the age of nine. In addition to her studies, Iole also participated in crowd scenes on stage as a dancer. She made her debut as a prima ballerina in 1890 at the age of 16.
Chaliapin’s first wife later distinguished herself on the world’s finest stages. In Venice, at the Teatro La Fenice, where Iole played the leading part in the ballet “Coppélia” by Léo Delibes, she was noticed by Savva Mamontov, a major Russian entrepreneur and owner of the Moscow Private Opera, who then invited her to go on tour to Nizhny Novgorod.
It was there that Iole met Chaliapin, who was also touring. Although Iole did not speak a word of Russian and Chaliapin did not know Italian, they fell in love instantly and got married on August 10, 1898. After the ceremony, Iole Tornagi worked for two more seasons. She staged ballet scenes in the operas “Khovanshchina”, “Sadko” (in 1897 — a serpentine dance in the underwater kingdom during the wedding ceremony of Volkhova and Sadko), and “Prince Igor”; she played Swanilda in “Coppélia” and also performed as a soloist in opera productions.
She was addressed as Iola Ignatyevna and turned out to be an excellent hostess. Her son Feodor recalled,
