Chaliapin passing through Paris

he tells us some memories of Russia

Chaliapin in Paris! The news suddenly spread yesterday.

Chaliapin! This name evokes the times both so close and so distant when Russian art triumphed in France with its ballets and its singers. He was immediately glorious. Moreover, everything contributed to the fame of this artist. Wasn't her life wonderful as a fairy tale? The fairies, who had made him magnificently beautiful, had wanted him to be born in a poor man's cradle. But he was still promised a dazzling youth. He was not twenty years old when already in Finland and in the Crimea people celebrated his prodigious talent as an actor and singer, his bass voice so powerful, so deep, so supple that it seemed unreal, even though it was too moving. so as not to be above all human,

He knew the imperial honors, the acclamations of the delirious crowds, not only in Russia but in the whole world, which he traversed in triumphant demi-god.

These days of apotheosis were succeeded by the years of war and Bolshevism.

Returning to Russia in 1914, Chaliapin remained there until June of last year. A tour in America, another in England and he finally comes to France. He , | eight days ago he landed in Paris in an incognito which was not discovered until yesterday. Here it is ; he remained as he appeared to us on the unforgettable evenings when the applause of the public at the Opera rose up to him. Her giant stature has remained slender and barely a little silver has mingled, near the temples, with the gold of her hair. He smiles at the friends around him, at Raoul Gunsbourg who first brought him to France and who has remained his confidant, at Sem who crunches him while he talks; he leans towards the window, points to the sky and exclaims: “He is still incomparable in Paris!” Will he tell us what's going on there? They urge him to do so, but he shakes his head. He objects:

“I'm just an artist; I have no right to pass judgment on what I saw, at most I can have impressions. »

A flame lights up her blue eyes; his somewhat large nostrils, which give his pale face a sardonic expression, quiver. He exclaims: “No, no, I will not speak to you of the painful hours that we lived through, of our sufferings. I will only tell you why I stayed in Russia. I felt that I had to do it, because by my presence, I could accomplish a useful work: to save the theater, to preserve for my less fortunate comrades their livelihood. Son of mujiks I am, I can say it without false modesty, popular throughout Russia. Chaliapin continuing to play, what an example! That's why I sang throughout the Revolution. I sang for nothing, or for a modest fee of 20 francs! What memories I have of some of those evenings! I saw the Tsar's box in the Imperial Theater in Petrograd occupied by poor, scantily clad people. They listened, silent. ecstatic, their eyes wide, their heads resting on their fists. From top to bottom of the theater the hall was packed with a popular crowd whose enthusiasm overflowed. Did these spectators suspect that they were offering me an unforgettable spectacle?

And the general situation, will Chaliapin tell us what he thinks about it? Alas! On all political subjects, his desire for silence is inflexible.

But we have a presentiment of the privations he had to endure, like the others, when he recalls with what delight he rediscovered the Turkish baths, which had disappeared for many years, and the 8 million rubles he paid, at the end of its ablutions, the treat of a bouillabaisse, the ouha, which all Russians adore.

“8 million roubles, he explains, sounds huge, but it is the equivalent of 4 gold roubles. As, before the war, bouillabaisse cost 3 roubles, you see that life has hardly increased. »

He smiles now with an ingenuous smile. Then, becoming serious again, he affirms that, in spite of everything, France is unanimously loved in Russia and that in the most troubled days this feeling has not diminished.

In. in the evening, a rapid took Chaliapin to the shores of the ocean, where he would take a few weeks' vacation before setting out again for England,

Geo London