Aleksandra Molas

Aleksandra Nikolaevna Molas (nee Purgold) is Russian chamber singer (mezzo-soprano), who was born in 1844.


Great artistic talent combined with excellent school. A. Molas studied with the talented singing pedagogue Henriette Nissen-Saloman. She also took lessons from Dargomyzhsky and Osip Petrov.


She and her sister pianist Nadezhda Purgold, who married Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1872, were constant participants of creative meetings of composers, who were in ''The Mighty Handful'' ("The Five").


She sang wonderfully romances and songs of Modest Mussorgsky (especially ''Darling Savishna'', ''The Orphan'', cycle ''The Nursery'') and assume all female parts from high soprano to contralto in ''The stone guest'' Dargomyzhsky, ''The Maid of Pskov'' Rimsky-Korsakov, ''Boris Godunov'' Mussorgsky and other new Russian operas of that time.


Harsh and naive, tragic and comic works sounded with the same expression in her performance. Vladimir Stasov said that she performed parts of ''Boris Godunov'' ''with artistry, fire, passion, grace, enthusiasm and playfulness and above all with the simplicity and naturalness, which resemble to the peerless performance of the Mussorgsky''.


Amazing performance of A. Molas was the incentive for participants of the club, who created some of their compositions specially for her interpretation.
A. Molas died in 1929, when she was 86.


 

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