Maria Maksakova

Maria Petrovna Maksakova (Russian: Мария Петровна Максакова, née: Sidorova; April 8, 1902 – August 11, 1974) was a Soviet opera singer, mezzo-soprano, a leading soloist in the Bolshoi Theatre (1923–1953), who enjoyed great success in the 1920s and 1930s, in the times often referred to as the golden age of Soviet opera. Maria Maksakova, the three times laureate of the Stalin Prize (1946, 1949, 1951), was designated as a People's Artist of the USSR in 1971. The actress Lyudmila Maksakova is her daughter; singer and TV presenter Maria Maksakova Jr. her granddaughter. Maria Sidorova was born in Astrakhan, one of six children of Pyotr Sidorov, the executive director of the Volga Shipping company. After her father's death, ten-year-old Maria joined a local church choir to help her 27-year-old mother sustain a family. It was there that her vocal abilities were first noticed. Sidorova engaged herself in intensive self-education and a year later became a lead in the alto section of the choir, with which she stayed until 1917.

In late 1917, Sidorova joined the Astrakhan musical college to study the piano. She had no instrument at home, and had to stay at school to practise literally day and night. In the early 1918, she started studying vocal, originally as contralto. Regarded as one of the best in the class, she was often sent on obligatory 'tours' to sing for the Red Army soldiers and sailors. "I enjoyed success and was extremely proud of it", she later wrote. One of her tutors, Smolenskaya, started to train Sidorova as soprano, which Sidorova greatly enjoyed. "With her I studied for a year. Then the Astrakhan theatre was moved to Tsaritsyn and I decided to join its troupe, so as to go on studying with my pedagogue," she later recalled. "[Maksakova] mastered a professional vocal range, demonstrating flawless precision in intonations and perfect sense of rhythm. What was most attractive in the young singer's performances was her musical and verbal expressiveness, her total involvement with the lyrics", wrote Mikhail Lvov in his 1947 biography.