On October, 20-21 Moscow will host the Muslim Magomayev international vocalist contest, dedicated to the 70th years ince the birth of the late singer of this legendary singer. The contest will be held in two rounds – opera and variety performance. 207 performers from 18 countries have already applied for participation in this event.
According to Tamara Sinyavskaya, Magomayev’s widow and People’s Artist of the USSR, there are more than 200 applications, "and it is an enormous figure for an international singers’ contest, especially such a young one. Our contest isn’t all that widely-advertised, so I think such a great number of applications is due to the popularity of Muslim. It was very hard to select the participants. One of the innovations of this year’s contest is that we’ve changed the age conditions of participation. We used to have the limit of 40 years – but I think this is actually…too old for someone who starts to conquer the stage… or the world or his country, doesn’t matter. So now the allowed age of the participants is from 23 to 35. Our contest is also unusual as you need to know how to sing not only opera, but also such genres as variety and musical: the man after which the contest is named could do all that. Of course, it is a very high standard, and some of the applicants, it seems, didn’t read the conditions of participation attentively, so some of them sent us their karaoke performances, others – only classical opera… So the selection was a very hard procedure. I don’t know how the members of the jury will see it, but I believe the level of performers we’ve selected is very high. There are both men and women, so the contest will be hard in this regard too. So now you know the answer – would I myself participate in this contest? No. This is a major responsibility, to try proving yourself in opera as well as in musicals and variety art".
Dmitry Bertman, art director of the Helikon Opera musical theatre said that Russia has given several performers to the world who have defined the level of the whole planet. "I think it started mostly in the 20th century with Feodor Chaliapin who founded a whole new approach to singing, and not only opera singing. I believe Muslim Magomayev belongs to this rank of great performers. Of course, I have a personal sympathy towards him, his records have been playing in my home when I was a child, he was my parents’ favorite singer, so I grew up on this music. And we are close friends with Tamara Sinyavskaya, we work together with her in the Russian University of Theatre Arts, we head the Musical Theatre Faculty, so we bring up young actors together.
"And in general the jury members are all our close friends: Elena Vasilyevna Obraztsova, Tamara Guartsiteli, Lev Leshenko, Farhad Sheni-oglu (the chancellor of the Baku Conservatory). I believe that it is a great contest. I’ve already listened to a certain part of the selected performers, and even though it was only a small part I can say that it will be a high-class contest. I actually believe it is the leading contest of that sort in Russia. I admire the singers who applied to it. And the contest is truly international. Not alike other contest which a said to be ‘international; even though the ‘foreigners’ come from, say, Ukraine. It is a truly international contest with high-class performers. It will be a very interesting competition. And it would be very interesting for me personally, as for me it would be the third contest in which I participate as a jury member. First one took place 11 years ago in Vienna, the ‘Belvedere’ contest. The second one took place in Rome, and now the third one will finally take place in my Motherland. And I’m very grateful to Tamara for that".
Aras Agalarov, Crocus City Hall foundertouched upon the specific traits of the contest. "First of all, as it was already mentioned, Muslim Magomayev contest includes not only opera, but pop singing as well. But that’s not all. It’s acting, its performance, sense of style and musical taste. The participants’ outlook and manner also matter. And there’s something else: Muslim knew how to capture the audience – and not everyone knows how to do that. There’re a few people in the whole world who know how to do that. In this contest one should not only sing good opera, he should have all the abovementioned qualities to win. And that’s what makes this contest so special".
Mikhail Gusman, Honoured Art Worker: "Some time ago I found out that the cult film Seventeen Moments of Spring soundtrack was originally recorded by Muslim. He recorded all songs by Mikhael Tariverdiyev. But it so happened that when the director, Tatyana Lianozova, heard the recordings, she loved them a lot, but still the songs were supposed to come as if from the film’s main hero, and there was too much of Magomayev himself in them for that. These songs could not become associated with the image created by actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov. So in the end Joseph Kobzon sang the songs for the film. The recorgings by Muslim have never been edited, so I asked Tamara to find them. She is very protective of Muslim’s archives, as much as he was himself. So she found the records and they will soon be issued on a CD. It has no direct connection to the competition, but it seems that it is an important thing to mention, s millions of Russians would love to hear these songs".
