Mikhail Akimovich Slonov (16 November 1869 – 11 February 1930) was a Russian baritone singer, composer, translator and music teacher. He was born into a merchant family in the Kholodna Hora district of Kharkiv.
A friend of his mother, the Kharkiv merchant and philanthropist Yakov Lysikov, placed the gifted boy in a church choir and later supported his studies at the Moscow Conservatory from 1887 to 1893. Slonov studied singing with I. Miller and later with the Mariinsky Theatre singer Elizaveta Lavrovskaya, and composition with Anton Arensky and later Sergei Taneyev.
He became particularly close to Sergei Rachmaninoff and Fyodor Chaliapin. In December 1892, Slonov arranged Rachmaninoff’s concert tours in Russian cities, including Kharkiv, and took him to Lebedyn in the summer of 1893. In February 1903, he brought Chaliapin to Kharkiv for a concert at the Commercial Club opera theatre. Slonov and Chaliapin subsequently travelled from Odesa to Egypt, performing Russian folk songs at a private evening in Constantinople. Slonov also taught singing at Arsenyeva’s girls’ gymnasium.
Later, Slonov worked as a music instructor for the State Publishing House and led amateur choirs in the mid-1920s. He compiled song collections for music-school pupils and translated more than 100 texts of vocal works by foreign composers into Russian, helping singers gain access to international vocal repertoire. His romances and choral works were published; his best-known songs include “The Evening Quietly Fades,” to words by Tyutchev, “An Unusual Flower of Love,” “I Fear That with Passionate Love,” to words by Balmont, and “Yes, I Love You,” to words by Pleshcheyev.
Slonov died in Moscow on 11 February 1930 and was buried at Vagankovo Cemetery.
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