FROM THE BOLSHOI TO LA SCALA

A surprising, splendid, dramatic tenor, who treated his gift with great consideration and enthusiastically honed it, Lutfiyar Imanov was one of the virtuoso Azerbaijan professional tenors. The directors gave him the best, most famous parts. He sang the arias from the operas "Carmen", "Faust", "Othello", "Il Trovatore" ["The Troubadour"], "Aida" and "Rigoletto" at the best opera houses in the world, including Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre and Milan's La Scala.

A brilliant talent

"What was actually Imanov's world debut took place in 1959 during a ten-day festival of Azerbaijani art in Moscow," Fazil Rahmanzada, a publicist and theatre critic, the author of a number of books on arts' personalities, including Lutfiyar Imanov, recounts. "By the way, the Russian public was to a certain extent sceptical about performers from the provinces, regarding them as somewhat exotic. But those stereotypes were dispelled there, when the incomparable Lutfiyar gave a brilliant performance in the opera "Koroglu" by the equally great composer Uzeyir Hacibayov, at the Bolshoi Theatre in the spring of 1959."

At that time, only a small group of art critics recalled that opera existed in Azerbaijan. True, the audience at large did know about "The Cloth Peddler" ["Arsin mal alan"] and "If not This One, That One!" ["O omasin, bu olsun"] but regarded them as operettas created for audiences in the provinces. Theatrical life was to a certain extent similar to today's show business in that one constantly needs to assert one's place in it. The great [singer] Bul Bul, who symbolically sang the aria from "Koroglu" was the first to make Azerbaijani opera publicly known.

But more than 20 years had passed by that moment (1959). Many things had happened in that period (the war, a tyrant had died who had gone back and forth across a big country perpetrating repressions), so therefore many things had been forgotten. The first performance of "Koroglu" at the Bolshoi Theatre in distant 1938 had also been forgotten. It was probably Imanov's performance that for the first time after an interval of many years made people see Azerbaijani opera in a serious light once again. His subsequent performances of the works of Mozart, Verdi, Bizet, Leoncavallo and other recognised masters confirmed Baku's status as a serious school of music.

Lutfiyar did not forget about Azerbaijani composers, and was actually one of the first to bring their works to world audiences," the art critic recounts. "He created a simply standard character of Balas in the opera 'Sevil' by Fikrat Amirov, Ayaz in the opera 'Azad' by Cahangir Cahangirov, Vaqif in the work of the same name by Ramiz Mustafayev, Aliyar in 'Nargiz' by Muslim Magomayev."

We know the names of the performers, composers, libretto writers, conductors and directors. But very few people think about the fact that they had received the backing of a good, professional school, which was able to find and polish talent.

In March 1943, i.e. at the very height of the war in Lutfiyar's homeland, in Sabirabad, which was poverty-stricken at that time, a music and drama theatre was opened. This is what made it possible for the 15-year-old youth who was attracted by the theatre to go and work there as a prompter.

But life in the theatre drags you in, especially if it is your goal and you are prepared to work to achieve it. His acting talent (an opera singer must also be an actor) and his splendid voice did not remain unnoticed. It needs to be said that the dramatic tenor's gift that Imanov had (and Bul Bul as well) is the best thing that a person attracted to the opera can have. The voice has a wide range allowing the singer to perform all the very best roles by recognised masters. True, the voice of the dramatic tenor is a powerful "weapon" that the singer needs to learn how to use. The school has a particularly important part to play here.

Report on the work done 

The Soviet school of opera, to give it its due, was one of the best in the world. The 1930s-1950s was probably one of the best periods for Azerbaijan's opera. It was precisely at that time that the national opera art flourished and the Azerbaijani school produced a whole pleiad of opera singers. The name of Azerbaijan's State Theatre of Musical Comedy, which had opened in the 1930s, was already resounding by the end of the 1940s, naturally first and foremost thanks to the operettas "The Cloth Peddler", "If Not This One, That One!", "Haci Qara", "Ulduz" and "Durna".

This theatre which was originally regarded as an outsider, a place for light-hearted, "comedy" performances, has already become literally a forger of brilliant singers and actors after a few years, and, as a result, was the most popular theatre with Azerbaijani audiences. In this sense, Lutfiyar was lucky that he managed to get a job at the Musical Comedy Theatre. Just as it did for many others, this theatre became a springboard for Imanov; from there he went on to work at Azerbaijan's State Theatre of Opera and Ballet and spent trial periods in Moscow and Milan.

Imanov always stood out for his enormous capacity for work. Even at 80 years of age he was not only coaching people but also singing. Lutfiyar Imanov gave his last solo concert at the Azerbaijan State Philharmonic in 2006, where he did in a certain sense recapitulate the 50 years packed with creative activity. He continued to mentor the up-and-coming generation of actors and singers right up to the end of his life. He headed the Union of Theatrical Figures, resolving the theatre's problems, so that what had been accumulated by several generations of singers, directors, and composers was not forgotten, even in what were the most difficult years for the opera. His efforts and works have not been lost. The Baku Opera School continues to exist. Interest in the opera art has flagged somewhat, and today not everyone appreciates the splendours of real live performances of operas by Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Gounod, Bizet, Amirov and Hajibeyov, but the school is still there and waiting for the time to be right for it.