Ukrainian opera singer-tenor.
Biography
An information table on the memorial stone at the site where the Mencinski house stood
Artistic and memorial tablet
Modest Mencynskyi was born in the village of Velyki Novosilky (now Mostysk district, Lviv region) in the family of a village priest of the UGCC. His father, Omelian Mentsynsky, came from a family of priests from the Lemko village of Chorne, and his family name comes from the name of the village of Matsyna (Mentsyna) in the Beskydy. Modest grew up in the village of Khidnovychi, where his parents moved in 1888. From an early age, he was fond of folk songs and rituals.
From his father, he learned the basics of music notation. He studied at a gymnasium until the sixth grade in Drohobych, and later in Sambir, graduating in 1896. From 1896 to 1899 he studied at the Lviv Theological Seminary. At the Lviv Theological Seminary, one of his singing teachers was Fr.
He mastered the art of singing under the guidance of professor of the Lviv Conservatory Valerian Vysotsky and Julius Stockhausen in Frankfurt am Main (Germany). Modest came to Galicia during his vacations and gave concerts in Przemysl, Lviv, Stanislav (Ivano-Frankivsk), Stryi, Ternopil, Sambir, and other cities. On March 18, 1901, he made his first debut on the Frankfurt stage in Flotov's opera Martha (the role of Lionel). He performed on the opera stages of many European cities. In 1904-1908 he was the first tenor of the Royal Opera in Stockholm.
In 1905 he married a Swedish woman, Clare Degn, in Stockholm. She always attended the performances in which Modest Omelyanovich performed, and later gave an assessment of his singing and acting. He had two sons, Ivan (Hans) and Yurii.
In 1905, Mentsynsky performed in London at the Royal Covent Garden Theater. In 1903 and 1908-1909 he sang at the Lviv Opera, and in 1910-1926 he was a soloist at the Cologne Opera. He also performed in Munich, Darmstadt, and Berlin. In 1926, he sang again at the Stockholm Opera. Soon he opened a singing school there, where he taught vocals. He was actually the creator of the Swedish vocal school, which was so talentedly continued by his student Arne Sunnegård.
Modest Mencinski became famous for singing parts in operas by Wagner (Siegfried, Lohengrin, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Tristan und Isolde). Among other roles: Radames (Aida, Giuseppe Verdi), Otello (Otello, G. Verdi), Nadir (The Pearl Seekers, J. Bizet), Canio (La Pagliacci, R. Leoncavallo), Eleazar (The Cardinal's Daughter, Galévy), Herod (Salome, R. Strauss) and others. His repertoire included 50 operas.
Mentsynsky often gave concerts in his homeland, involving choirs, including the Lviv Boyan and Banduryst choirs. In February 1916, he organized a concert for Ukrainian prisoners of war in the Austrian Wenzlär camp. Mentsynsky, as a tireless promoter of Ukrainian musical culture abroad, constantly performed works by Ukrainian composers: Mykola Lysenko ("My Eyes Burn," "Days Go By," "Ukraine Was Noisy," "I Don't Care," all based on the words of Taras Shevchenko), D. Sichynsky ("Thinking about Hetman Nechai," "When You Hear at Night" based on the words of Ivan Franko), and Y. Yaroslavenko ("Hey, Cuckoo Me Cuckoo" based on the words of V. Pachovsky and S. Liudkevych).
He died on December 11, 1935. He was buried in the Catholic cemetery in Stockholm.
On the work of Modest Mencinski
"Perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that Mencynsky was the first to show in Galicia, and perhaps in Ukraine in general, the music to Kobzar in its best and most faithful form and became the first classical performer in our country in the style of M. Lysenko. No one here, perhaps, can still forget the enormous impression that Mentsynsky made with his performance of the songs "Behind the thought of a thought", "Ukraine was in a tumult" or "Hetmans, Hetmans"... Indeed, no foreign artist, even the greatest, could perform these songs like that, but only a Ukrainian of blood and bone.
- Stanislav Liudkevych
Honored by
Medal of Literature and Arts (Sweden, 1906).
Government awards.
A street in Lviv.
