Olga Feliksovna Iosefovich, performing under the pseudonym Olga Olgina, is a famous Polish opera singer with a coloratura soprano, teacher and musical educator.
Biography
Olga was born in the summer of 1904 in Yaroslavl on the Volga into a wealthy, intelligent family. The girl's father, Felix Iosefovich, a Pole, was a Russian officer with the rank of general. The mother of the future singer, nee Stepanova, was a singing teacher and a Russian opera singer (dramatic soprano), performing under the stage name Olga Olgina, which her daughter later took for herself.
Olga spent her entire childhood in St. Petersburg. Here she graduated from high school, and then from the Conservatory of Music. The general's daughter received a classical education at home, already at the age of six she played the piano excellently, danced and easily quoted famous poets.
Among her teachers were the legendary Lavrov, Blumenfeld, Drozdov. After graduating from the Conservatory, Olga was handed a letter of recommendation to the great Ferruccio Busoni. She was to continue her musical education in Berlin under the guidance of this master. But fate decreed otherwise. To leave for Berlin, Olga Feliksovna first had to go with her mother to Vilnius, where she stayed, abandoning her career as a pianist, opting for singing.
Singing career
Olga's debut performance took place at the Vilnius Opera on December 1, 1922. She sang the part of Violetta from the famous La Traviata and made a good impression on connoisseurs of opera. The singer went on her first tour in 1925, visited Austria and Yugoslavia, and then stayed to perform at the Warsaw Opera.
In 1934, Olga Olgina moved to Poland, to the city of Poznan, performed throughout Europe, and in the UK she recorded an album in collaboration with the famous Decca Records studio. In December 1936, Olga Feliksovna arranged her personal life, becoming the wife of Zygmunt Matskevich, a cavalry captain. She decided to leave the stage for the sake of her family and settled with her husband in a small town near Vilnius.
But with the outbreak of World War II, Zygmunt was mobilized, and the singer returned to Vilnius, where she was happily accepted into the conservatory. Unfortunately, the conservatory soon had to be closed, but throughout the war Olga spent musical evenings at her home, seriously helped the Resistance and received a medal for this after the end of the war. Her husband was captured, spent several years there, and then moved to England, from where he decided not to return. The singer herself moved to Poland in 1945, began working at the Lodz Conservatory and gave her last solo concert there in 1947.
Teaching and recent years
By the fifties, Olga finally left the stage and devoted herself exclusively to teaching vocals. She received a professorship, organized a singing class at the Lodz Conservatory. Among her students there are many big names in the opera scene: Katarzyna Rymarchik, Bozena Saulská, Wieslawa Freiman.
In the sixties Olga became the dean of the vocal faculty, was a member of the jury of many international singing competitions. The great singer passed away on the last day of January 1979.
