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(Russian: Антонина Васильевна Нежданова, 16 June [O.S. 4 June] 1873 – 26
June 1950) was a Russian lyric-coloratura soprano. An outstanding opera
singer, she represented the Russian vocal school at its best.
Nezhdanova was born near Odessa. In 1899, she entered the Moscow
Conservatory. Upon her graduation three years later she joined the
Bolshoi Theatre, rapidly becoming its leading soprano. She sang often,
too, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg and also in Kiev and
Odessa. Paris heard her in 1912, when she appeared opposite the great
tenor Enrico Caruso and Caruso’s baritone equivalent, Titta Ruffo.
Nezhdanova was the dedicatee of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, and she
was the first performer of the arrangement for soprano and orchestra,
with the composer conducting. She created a number of operatic roles.
After the 1917 Russian Revolution she stayed on at the Bolshoi, unlike
some of her fellow opera singers, who left their native country for the
West. In 1936, she began to teach singing in Moscow and was appointed a
professor at the city’s conservatory in 1943.
She was married to the conductor Nikolai Golovanov and died in Moscow in
1950.
Nezhdanova made a number of recordings that display the beauty and
flexibility of her voice and the excellence of her technique. She is
considered by opera historians and critics to have been one of the
finest sopranos of the 20th century.
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