MOUSSORGSKY - SONGS - COMPLETE - BORIS CHRISTOFF- BASSO

$

45

THIS OUTSTANDING RECORDING OF ALL OF MOUSSORGSKY'S SONGS WAS DONE BY EMI IN THE MID 1950'S.  THE RECORDING ORIGINALLY PACKED A HIGH END PRICE AND ONLY A LIMITED NUMBER OF COPIES WERE RELEASED.  4 LP RECORDS IN ALMOST UNPLAYED CONDITION PLUS A RICHLY DETAILED BOOK WITH PHOTOGRAPHS, AND NOTES AND SONG TEXTS IN RUSSIAN, FRENCH AND ENGLISH. CLOTH BOUND BOX FROM ANGEL RECORDS.  THESE SETS ARE NOW HARD TO FIND IN SUCH GOOD CONDITION, BOX IN EXCELLANT CONDITION, RECORDS IN ALMOST PERFECT CONDITION, BOOK SHOWS SLIGHT YELLOWING FROM AGE.

Boris Christoff (Bulgarian: ????? ???????, by official transliteration Boris Hristov) (May 18, 1914, Plovdiv, Bulgaria – June 28, 1993, Rome, Italy) was a Bulgarian opera singer. He is considered to have been one of the greatest basses of the 20th century.

Christoff demonstrated early his singing talent and sang as a boy at the choir of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Sofia. In the late 1930s he graduated in law and started on a career as a magistrate. He, however, continued singing in his spare time in the Gusla Chorus in Sofia, achieving an enormous success as the chorus soloist in 1940. Thanks to a government grant, Christoff left in May 1942 for Italy where he was tutored for two years in the core Italian bass repertoire by the great baritone of an earlier generation, Riccardo Stracciari.

After several guest appearances and recitals in Austria in 1944 and 1945, Christoff returned to Italy in December 1945. He made his operatic debut as Colline in La bohème at Reggio Calabria on March 12, 1946. The following years Christoff appeared in a number of roles at Milan's La Scala, Venice's La Fenice, the Rome Opera, Covent Garden in London, the opera theatres in Naples, Barcelona, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, etc.

In 1950 he was invited to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York but was refused entry into the USA as a result of the McCarran Immigration Act, which banned citizens of the Soviet bloc countries from entering the country. The role was instead filled by the young Italian basso, Cesare Siepi. After the restrictions were loosened, Christoff made an operatic debut in the United States in 1956 at the San Francisco Opera. He refused any further invitations to the Metropolitan and never appeared there. After a brief absence from the scene due to brain tumour surgery in 1964, Christoff resumed his career in 1965, though at a much slower pace. In 1967 he was allowed to return to Bulgaria for the first time since 1945, for the funeral of his mother.

THIS SET CONSISTS OF OVER 65 SONGS SOME WITH THE FRENCH RADIO TELEVISION ORCH. UNDER GEORGES TZIPINE AND OTHERS WITH PIANISTS GERALD MOORE AND ALEXANDER LABINSKY

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