In the assessments of the unique lyric and dramatic soprano, People's Artist of the Soviet Union, laureate of the State Prize of the RSFSR Tamara Milashkina, practically all connoisseurs and connoisseurs of opera art are united. Even the most impartial critics rarely hear any condemnation of her technique, style, manner of singing. The reason lies in the incomprehensible harmony of the inner appearance of the singer. In the sound of her voice there is a "soul capable of comprehending."
Nature has endowed Tamara Milashkina with a richly colored voice with a warm chest timbre and a wide range of two and a half octaves. Her singing, unique in terms of the mobility of the entire sound line and striking in its expressiveness and absolute freedom, is characterized by vocal specialists as follows: "Voiced and flighty upper notes, dense and rounded sound in the central register, rich and chesty melodiousness on the bottom." But is it only the marvelous voice, which, according to I. Arkhipova, is born once every hundred years, the reason for the singer's success and fame? The second component of Milashkina's talent is her extremely painstaking work on herself, which in art in the language of professionals is called “smart work”.
Tamara was born in the fall of 1934 in the Mirnenko family, who lived in the lower Volga region (the city of Astrakhan) in the pre-war period. While studying at school, and then at the library technical school, the girl enthusiastically engaged in amateur performances and a choir circle. Her mother sang beautifully, played the mandolin and guitar, and together with her brothers Tamara played music with pleasure in the home ensemble. Heard in childhood Russian songs, romances and melodies from the Volga prompted the desire to take up vocals. The girl begins her professional musical education at a music school in 1953.
It so happened that Milashkina's talents were noticed and noted more than once and in time by connoisseurs and connoisseurs of classical vocals. Even in the first year of the music school, Maria Maksakova drew attention to the owner of a unique voice. The famous compatriot Tamara strongly recommended the girl to continue her studies at the Moscow Conservatory.
Tamara was a 4th year student when, at the All-Union Competition of Vocalists in 1957, by the unanimous decision of the jury, she was selected out of 100 performers applying for the first prize. The gold medal of the laureate Milashkina was presented by the renowned Italian tenor Tito Skripa. It was the start of the singer's artistic career.
Three years later, among the first Soviet trainees, Milashkina was sent to Milan, where world authorities (Maria Callas and others) recognized that the young singer has an exceptional vocal talent that “does not need polishing”. Milashkina is spelled out in the history of Russian opera as the first of the representatives of the vocal school of Soviet Russia, who entered the stage of the famous La Scala after the great Russian performers Chaliapin and Sobinov, who shone there. She managed to subdue the Italians and remove the barrier of mistrust of the legislators of the opera towards Russian vocalists, performing the complex ensemble part of Lida, the heroine of Verdi's opera "Battle of Legnano", which has never been staged in domestic theaters.
Studying at the capital's music university was marked by a fateful meeting with the People's Artist of the USSR, professor of the Moscow State Conservatory E. K. Katulskaya, in whose class Tamara studied from 1955 to 1959. An extremely gifted and philanthropic person, Elena Klementyevna became a mentor for the future opera prima donna not only in her profession, but also in life. “She was my true mother in art” - this is what Tamara Andreevna will say at a meeting in 2017, when she donated the portrait of her first and only teacher (the work of PI Kelin) to the Bakhrushin Museum.
Not only the formation of Milashkina's artistic appearance and creative manner is associated with the personality of Katulskaya, but also the history of the origin of her stage name. Studying with her beloved student (nee Mirnenko), Elena Klementyevna often exclaimed “Tamarochka, you are adorable! Well, really, cutie!"
Tamara Milashkina began singing at the main operatic price of the country in 1958. Before completing her studies at the conservatory, she became an intern at the Bolshoi. The 23-year-old artist made her debut, performing with Lemeshev in Tchaikovsky's opera "Eugene Onegin". Pushkin's Tatyana was replaced by the heroine of the comic opera "The Taming of the Shrew" Katarina, Liza in "The Queen of Spades", Natasha Rostova in Prokofiev's epic "War and Peace".
For 3 decades Tamara Andreevna has been on the opera stage of the Bolshoi Theater. All the arias of the repertoire created for the lyric-dramatic soprano are subject to her voice. The singer's unique vocal talent is evidenced by the twenty-five versatile Italian and Russian parts that she performed here.
Favorite composers: Verdi (Don Carlos, Aida, Othello, Troubadour) and Tchaikovsky (Eugene Onegin, Iolanta, Mazepa). The roles of Alice Ford in Falstaff (1962) and Lyubka and in the opera Semyon Kotko (1970) were performed by Milashkina in the premiere performances of the Bolshoi. She brilliantly masters the technique and skill of performing arias of world classics (Bizet, Gounod, Puccini), and sincerely and sincerely she conveys the stage images created by the great Russian composers: Yaroslavna in Prince Igor, Olga in Pskovityanka, Volkhova in Sadko. One of the "crown" roles in her repertoire, starting from the 70s, was Leonora from Verdi's opera "Troubadour". However, she still considers her first work at the Bolshoi Theater to be Milashkin's favorite role (Tatiana in Eugene Onegin).
Tamara Andreevna possessed a significant chamber repertoire, sang beautifully folk songs and classical romances, which is not a subject for every academic vocalist. The singer in Italian expressively conveyed the beauty of the melody and in Russian deeply felt the poetry of the word, thereby creating a special atmosphere of elegy. Her performance of the romance "And there are no eyes in the world" is recognized as unsurpassed.
The filmography of the artist consists of a dozen works, among which the most notable are films-operas: "The Stone Guest", "The Queen of Spades", "Prince Igor". Milashkina's voice behind the scenes accompanies T. Semina's heroine in The Serf Actress, a popular musical film based on Strelnikov's operetta The Serf. The documentary film "Mosfilm" (1966) about the "charming Volga singer" was called by the authors "The Sorceress from the City of Kitezh". In addition to artistic titles, T. A. Milashkina in the 70s were awarded high government awards of the USSR - the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. The performance of the part of Donna Anna in Dargomyzhsky's opera "The Stone Guest" brought the actress in 1978 the State Prize of the Russian Federation.
The Bolshoi Theater, with its stormy stage life, shaped not only the diva's career, but also defined Milashkina's personal life. The famous tenor Vladimir Atlantov became her husband. They have been maintaining good and warm relations with each other for 4 decades already. When asked by journalists about which roles or voices the actors consider preferable for themselves, colleagues and spouses answer in a very extraordinary way. Vladimir Andreevich says: "Tamara is my first and only Donna Anna in my life!" Tamara Andreevna remarks with a sly smile: "You know who my favorite tenor is."
In the late 1980s, the opera duet Atlantov and Milashkina left the Bolshoi Theater and went to work on a contract basis on the leading European theater stages. After retirement, the couple stayed to live in the musical capital of the world, Vienna. From the very first performances here, Austrian critics called Milashkina "the beautiful Tamara" and "Russian Italian".
One of the recent visits to Moscow was associated with the presentation of a collection of 76 vocal works performed by People's Artists of the USSR V. A. Atlantov and T. A. Milashkina. There are not only opera arias, but also a bouquet of the best romances and songs from the chamber repertoire. The singer's luxurious, warm and quivering voice, capable of being both lyrically soulful and dramatically saturated, sounds on 4 out of 7 DVD discs with the “Favorite” recordings.
Tamara Andreevna Milashkina does not differ in scrupulousness in matters relating to her creative path - she does not write memoirs, does not collect photographs and reviews about herself. And in relation to fame, and in communication with people, and in everyday life, she is as simple and natural as in her sincere and life-affirming creativity. To a question about business or personal life from the venerable lady of today, just as she once did from a young student of the conservatory, one can hear a simple and laconic answer: “Fine!”.
