Life cut short at its peak

In August we would have marked Mykola Shopsha’s 60th birthday. It would have been a very special occasion highlighting one of Ukraine’s outstanding bass singers, a brilliant star and personality whose creative work has added substantially to our cultural space. Last but not least, he was a man with a big and loving heart.

Mykola Shopsha was part tender, creative soul and part broad Cossack character, who was capable of surmounting any obstacles single-handedly while confidently heading toward his lifelong goal, the opera stage, where he had reached the summits.

One year has passed since Shopsha’s death. Everyone who worked with him or enjoyed his voice at the National Opera of Ukraine is still mourning this irreparable loss. We simply refuse to admit that his life suddenly changed course and reached beyond the limits of time. It is very difficult to use the past tense when writing about Shopsha, for he was a singularly optimistic member of the National Opera’s cast, brimming with creative plans and confident about the future. Two days before his death he wanted to talk to Vitalii Kyreiko to discuss the change to a bass part of a role in his new opera Boiarynia (The Boyar Woman), so that he could take part in a production that he found very interesting. He was always very partial to the national repertoire and took part in every premiere by a Ukrainian composer during his years at the opera.

Mykola Shopsha was one of the finest basses in the world. His voice was captivatingly strong, his vocal skill perfect, and he had an exceptional range. His stage presence put him on an equal footing with the best dramatic actors. Every opera in which he sang brought the audience true aesthetic delight and cultural enrichment, allowing them to partake of real treasures of musical culture.

During his three decades on the stage, Shopsha created more than 30 operatic roles in the classical and contemporary repertoire, mostly monumental, psychologically saturated images in operas by Mykola Lysenko, Semen Hulak-Artemovsky, Borys Liatoshynsky, Mikhail Moussorgsky, Peter Tchaikovsky, Charles Gounod, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Dimitri Shostakovich. In these operas Shopsha’s broad vocal and dramatic talents were revealed, winning him international acclaim, as evidenced by his concert tours of Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland, the US, Holland, Sweden, and Denmark. He demonstrated to an amazed Europe the great vocal culture of the Ukrainian people, of which few people were aware. He represented an opera house that started quickly integrating into world musical art, where it occupies a firm and noticeable place.

Shopsha began performing professionally after graduating from the Kyiv Conservatory (Mykola Kondratiuk’s class). He had already acquired experience singing with an army song-and-dance ensemble and the Veriovka Merited Academic Choir of Ukraine. At the outset of his operatic career he met the outstanding Maestro Stefan Turchak, the then chief conductor and artistic director of the Kyiv Opera. This meeting determined the singer’s destiny. The great maestro understood the young singer’s enthusiasm, creative energy, and his desire to enrich his repertoire. In keeping with an old tradition at the Kyiv Opera, Shopsha had to climb from one rung to the next on the opera ladder to be assigned leading bass parts in the classical repertoire.

His creative biography includes a number of second-rate operatic parts (e.g., Kyrdiaha from Taras Bulba based on the Gogol novel, Don Fernando in Verdi’s Don Carlos, and Skuratov in Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride) but each one of his roles served as a stepping stone to the really important parts. He sang the part of Don Basilio in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), and later Vladimir Galitsky in Aleksandr Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Dosifei and Pimen in Moussorgsky’s Khovanshchina and Boris Godunov. He performed all these operatic parts with Maestro Turchak’s blessings.

These operas were a testing ground for his debut in the title role in Taras Bulba, which was destined to become one of Shopsha’s finest roles and one of the most interesting interpretations of this Cossack colonel during the nearly 80-year history of Lysenko’s opera on the Kyiv stage. Success awaited the singer when he was working on the vocally and dramatically sophisticated persona of the cruel and lascivious Boris Timofeevich in Shostakovich’s Katerina Izmailova (also known as Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk) which the young Shopsha played to perfection.

To a certain extent this operatic part brought him closer to the title role in Moussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. It had become apparent that the singer could cope with one of the most difficult operatic parts in the world repertoire, which required not only a considerable vocal range, a strong and resonant voice, but also deep insight into the character’s psychology and motivations, and a philosophical understanding of the composer’s concept. Moussorgsky portrayed Godunov as a man passing ruthless judgment on himself. Shopsha was able to ascend this operatic peak, thus passing the most difficult test of his creative maturity. He created a monumental image of a man who won the throne only to suffer from debilitating doubts ever after.

With each new operatic role on the Kyiv stage Shopsha became an increasingly noticeable creative figure in the Ukrainian and world operatic community. In 1978 he won the All-Ukraine Young Voices Competition; in 1979, he won the Mykola Lysenko Vocal Competition; and in 1980, the International Song Competition in Barcelona, after which he set off on his first big concert tour of the Scandinavian countries.

In 1995 Shopsha was awarded the Taras Shevchenko Prize for his classic Ukrainian operatic parts, further proof of our country’s official recognition of his great talent, mastery, and patriotic spirit. Step by step, he had been raising the Ukrainian operatic art to world levels.

Since his debut the singer shared his extraordinary talent at the opera and chamber concerts, gladdening his listeners’ hearts with his beautiful interpretations of Ukrainian folk songs, arias from well-known classical operas, romances, and works by Rachmaninoff, Lysenko, Massenet, Moussorgsky, Kosenko, Liatoshynsky, Dankevych, and Shamo. Contemporary Ukrainian composers (Bilash, Stankovych, Zubytsky, Kostin, Dychko, and Skoryk) were happy to write songs especially for Shopsha, with an eye to the beauty and strength of his voice and vocal range.

Shopsha sang with the finest orchestras, took part in concert programs featuring such famous performers as the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, National Folk Instruments Orchestra, and the Dumka Choir. On one occasion, after a chamber concert in New York City, Doug Russell, a noted US music critic, wrote in Record that the audience’s response to Shopsha’s performance was total admiration and surpassed all expectations. He wrote that God is his witness how badly we all need such talents. Shopsha has a deep bass, his voice is extremely strong and at the same time the singer uses the finest overtones; this places him on a par with the world’s top basses. His talent and perception of the audience broke the language barrier and the audience’s lack of knowledge of national themes. He is masterfully in command of his voice, facial expressions, and his every gesture. Everyone who watched and listened to him understood everything without an interpreter.

A music critic at The New York Times went even further, writing that Mykola Shopsha’s voice was exceptionally fine. His impassioned and remarkably dramatic performance made the audience hold its breath. This tall and well-built singer captivated every listener with the special strength of his voice, which he operated as masterfully as a skilled violinist does his instrument created by the brilliant Stradivari.

Mykola Shopsha’s repertoire was extremely diversified, numbering over 500 compositions and embracing practically all styles and eras in world musical culture, ranging from Handel’s oratorios to 20th century romances. The singer triumphantly performed bass parts in such legendary works as Mozart and Verdi’s Requiem, Beethoven’s 11th Symphony, Shostakovich’s operatic poem The Execution of Stepan Razin, and Stankovych’s oratorio Babyn Yar. However, the singer was particularly fond of Ukrainian folk songs, compositions that marked the beginning of his road to operatic art. His name will forever remain in this creative domain and in the hearts of all those who were fortunate enough to enjoy his great and singular vocal talent.