Alexander Baturin was an opera singer with a bass-baritone voice and a music teacher. He was born on June 17, 1904, in Oshmyany, then in the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire, into the family of a rural schoolteacher. He was one of four children and lost his father when he was one year old.
His family moved to Odessa in 1911. To help support his mother, Baturin worked as a mechanic in a garage; by the age of fifteen, he was driving cars. He sang in amateur performances, then entered the Petrograd Conservatory. He graduated with honors from the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad Conservatory in 1924, though some sources give 1925. Some accounts say he later studied at the Santa Cecilia Academy in Rome and performed at La Scala in Milan; this part of his biography has been questioned by later researchers.
From 1927, Baturin was a soloist at the Bolshoi Theatre. His roles included Pimen and Dosifei in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Tomsky in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, Gremin in Eugene Onegin, Prince Igor in Borodin’s opera of that name, Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen, and the title role in Rossini’s William Tell. He also performed Russian folk songs, romances, and contemporary popular songs. He appeared in three films: A Simple Case, Concert Waltz, and Earth.
In 1948, Baturin began teaching solo singing at the Moscow Conservatory. Among his students were Alexander Vedernikov and Nicolai Ghiaurov. He prepared a teaching work titled The School of Singing. Recordings include his performances as Tomsky in The Queen of Spades and as Prince Igor, as well as arias and songs issued on the record Alexander Baturin Sings.
Baturin received the title Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1937 and the Stalin Prize, First Class, in 1943 for his performance in William Tell. He was named People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1947. He died on January 31, 1983, and was buried at Kuntsevo Cemetery in Moscow.
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