Mravina E.K. (1864-1914), singer

Categories / Art/Music, Theatre/Personalia
MRAVINA (the stage name; nee Mravinskaya, married name Koribut-Dashkevich) Evgenia Konstantinovna (1864, St. Petersburg - 1914), opera singer (lyric coloratura soprano), chamber singer. Took singing lessons from I.P. Pryanishnikov (1883-86), continuing on in Italy (where her professional debut took place as Gilda in G. Verdi's Rigoletto, the City of Vittorio Veneto), in Berlin with D. Artaud, and in Paris with A. Bax and M. Marchesi. From 1886 to 1900 she performed as a soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre, touring abroad between parts (London, Constantinople, Vienna, Milan). Mravina was amazingly good at virtuoso singing parts, conveying a strong sense of her characters' ardent natures. Mravina was very concerned with the stage-presence of her roles, consulting N.F. Sazonov, the Alexandrinsky Theatre's star actor, on issues of dramatic creativity, and taking rhythm and dancing lessons from ballet dancer A.D. Chistyakov. Her best-known parts include Antonida (A Life for the Tsar), Lyudmila (Ruslan and Lyudmila, both operas pertain to M.I. Glinka), and The Snowmaiden (N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov's opera bearing the same name). Her roles from the foreign repertoire include Marguerite and Juliette (from Gounod's operas Faust and Romeo et Juliette respectively), Manon (G. Puccini's Manon Lescault), and Marguerite Valois (Les Huguenots by G. Meyerbeer). She quit the St. Petersburg stage in 1900 due to a conflict with the Direction of the Imperial Theatres and from that time until 1903 toured throughout Russia a great deal. After 1902, she settled in Yalta. Her last concert in St. Petersburg was given in the Hall of the Assembly of Nobility in 1906. Her written works include A Page from the Memoirs of the Artist, in Sovremennaya Muzyka, 1964, № 4.

References: Старк Э. А. Петербургская опера и ее мастера, 1890-1910. Л.; М., 1940; Григорьева А. П. Е. К. Мравина: Материалы к биографии. М., 1970.

E. V. Tretyakova. Artaud Margueritte Josephine Desire
Bax Arnold
Glinka Mikhail Ivanovich
Gounod Charles
Marchesi Castorone Matilda de
Meyerbeer Giacomo
Mravina Evgenia Konstantinovna
Pryanishnikov Ippolit Petrovich
Puccini Giacomo
Rimsky-Korsakov Nikolay Andreevich
Sazonov Nikolay Fedorovich
Verdi Giuseppe
Vetoshkin (Vetoshnikov) Mikhail Nikolaevich
Григорьева А. П. Е. К. Мравина: Материалы к биогр. М., 1970
Старк Э. А. Петербургская опера и ее мастера, 1890–1910. Л.; М., 1940 Mariinsky Theatre
Alexandrinsky Theatre
Imperial Theatres Board