The upper class Lensky sings this melody in the moments before his absurd death in a duel, but how many thousands died in the Soviet Union with the melody of Lensky's aria in their ears? Were they shot? Were they in battle? Were they starving? Were they freezing? Were they tortured?
The irony is that if they did hear this in their ears, it was probably being sung on a recording by Ivan Kozlovsky, one of the two leading tenors of the Bolshoi opera of his time, and Stalin's favorite tenor. It's not like Kozlovsky had any choice in Stalin's preference or could resist an official summons from Stalin to sing for him. But there's a story in Simon Sebag Montefiore's biography of Stalin that after Kozlovsky came to Stalin's dacha, Stalin's underlings got into an argument about what Kozlovsky should sing. Stalin finally said 'Kozlovsky should sing whatever he wants to sing, and what he wants to sing is Lensky's aria.' Stalin himself was said to be a good amateur singer (though who can know...) and would sometimes sing while Kozlovsky accompanied him on the piano.
Within the Soviet Union, Kozlovsky was feted as though he was a movie star, but being Stalin's favorite, he could never leave its borders, and thus his reputation is to this day mostly limited to Russia. Yet he sang every major 19th century lyric tenor role from every country, in Russian of course, and also seems to have sung some Wagner. But it clearly put no strain on his voice, there are videos on YouTube of him singing absurdly well and ridiculously high notes until his 80's!
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