Anton Bartsal
Anton Bartsal (25 May 1847 – 1927 or 1928) was a Czech and Russian opera singer, tenor, director, and music teacher. He was named an Honored Artist of the Imperial Theatres.
Of Czech nationality, Bartsal entered the Vienna Court Opera School in 1865 and also attended the musical-declamation classes of Professor Fechtgott-Tovoczowski at the Vienna Conservatory. He made his first public appearance at a concert of the Great Singing Society in Vienna on 4 July 1867, and made his operatic debut at the Prague Opera later that year.
In 1870 he toured Russia with the choir led by conductor Yuri Golitsyn and thereafter lived in Russia. He sang at opera houses in Kyiv, Odesa, and St. Petersburg, including Odesa Opera during the summer seasons of 1873 and 1874 and the 1877–1878 season. From 1878 to 1902 he was a soloist of the Bolshoi Theatre, where he also served as chief director from 1882 to 1903. He gave many concerts and was professor of the opera class at the Moscow Conservatory from 1898 to 1921. From 1921 until the end of his life, he lived in Germany.
Bartsal was the first performer on the Russian stage of Wagner’s Walther von der Vogelweide in Tannhäuser and Mime in Siegfried, as well as Richard in Verdi’s A Masked Ball. His other first performances included Vítek in Smetana’s Dalibor, conducted by the composer in Prague in 1868, and at the Bolshoi Theatre the roles of Shuisky in the second version of Boris Godunov, Sinodal in Rubinstein’s The Demon, Deforge in Dubrovsky, Radamès in Aida, the Duke in Rigoletto, and Tannhäuser.
Among his noted roles were Finn and the Prince in Dargomyzhsky’s Rusalka, Faust, Arnold, and Eléazar. His repertoire also included Sobinin, Bayan, Andrei Morozov, Berendey in The Snow Maiden, Almaviva in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Max in Der Freischütz, Alfredo in La Traviata, Manrico in Il Trovatore, Triquet in the first Bolshoi production of Eugene Onegin, Raoul in Les Huguenots, Vasco da Gama in L’Africaine, and the title role in Fra Diavolo. His pupils included the singers Vasily Petrov, Alexander Altshuller, and Pavel Rumyantsev.