Preobrazhenskaya S.P., (1904-1966), singer

Categories / Art/Music, Theatre/Personalia
PREOBRAZHENSKAYA Sofia Petrovna (1904, St. Petersburg - 1966, Leningrad), opera singer (mezzo-soprano), People's Artist of the USSR (1955). Graduated from Ershov and Zaytseva School of Music in 1928. Toured with the School Opera Workshop to Salzburg as Kashcheevna in Kashchei the Immortal, an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov. In 1928-59 she was a soloist at the Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre. She had a beautiful, smooth voice in all registers; she had great stage presence and was particularly good in dramatically intense, heroic roles. Her best roles were: Konchakovna (Prince Igor by A.P. Borodin), Marpha (The Khovansky Affair by M.P. Mussorgsky), Lyubasha (The Tsar's Bride by Rimsky-Korsakov), and Amneris (Aida G. Verdi). In Soviet operas she played: Young Communist Musya (Ice and Steel by V.M. Deshevov), Grunya (Battleship Potemkin by O.S. Chishko), and Efrosinya (Taras' Family by D.B. Kabalevsky) for which she received the Stalin Prize in 1951. One of her most important roles was that of Jeanne d'Arc in the opera Maid of Orleans by P.I. Tchaikovsky (Stalin Prize, 1946). She also performed as a chamber singer, her high-mark being Songs and Dances of Death by Mussorgsky). She taught in the Conservatory in 1947-54 and 1960-61, receiving her professorship in 1949. She wrote an article titled Thirty Years on the Stage (Muzykalnaya Zhizn. 1958. № 2). In 1937-66 she lived at 4 Dzerzhinskogo Street (today Gorokhovaya Street). She was buried at Literatorskie Mostky.

References: Трайнин В. Я. Софья Петровна Преображенская: Очерк жизни и творч. деятельности. Л., 1972; Корыхалова Н. П. Софья Преображенская. СПб., 1999.

E. V. Tretyakova. Borodin Alexander Porfirievich
Chishko Oles (Alexander) Semenovich
Deshevov Vladimir Mikhailovich
Ershov Ivan Vasilievich
Kabalevsky Dmitry Borisovich
Kirov (real name Kostrikov) Sergey Mironovich
Mussorgsky Modest Petrovich
Preobrazhenskaya Sofia Petrovna
Rimsky-Korsakov Nikolay Andreevich
Tchaikovsky Peter Ilyich
Verdi Giuseppe
Zaytseva-Bogomolova Nadezhda Nikolaevna
Gorokhovaya St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 4
Трайнин В. Я. Софья Петровна Преображенская: Очерк жизни и творч. деятельности. Л., 1972
Корыхалова Н. П. Софья Преображенская. СПб., 1999 Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory
State Opera and Ballet Theatre of the St. Petersburg Conservatory
Mariinsky Theatre
Literatorskie (Literary) Mostki, the museum-necropolis