Vasily Samus
Vasily Samus was a classical singer with a baritone voice, a dramatic actor, and a vocal teacher. He was also known by the stage name Maksimov and performed as a singer, actor, and reciter. He was born in Saint Petersburg into an impoverished noble family on January 6, 1849; some sources give 1852 as his birth year.
Samus studied at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory under Camillo Everardi. While still a student, he began performing on stage. He graduated in 1876 or 1878 and remained at the conservatory as Everardi’s assistant. His concert repertoire included solo parts in Hector Berlioz’s The Flight into Egypt, Boris Fitinhof-Schell’s oratorio St John of Damascus, Franz Liszt’s The Legend of Saint Elizabeth, fragments from Don Juan with music by Eduard Nápravník based on a dramatic poem by Alexei Tolstoy, excerpts from Berlioz’s The Trojans, Ivan Hoffmann’s Melusine, scenes from Robert Schumann’s Faust, and romances by Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Rimsky-Korsakov dedicated the romance Art to Samus.
At the same time, he worked as a dramatic actor at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. He made his debut there in the early 1880s under the name Maksimov, playing Kholmin in Wandering Lights.
After graduating from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Samus taught solo singing there for the rest of his life, first as an assistant to the principal teacher. He became a professor in 1886. From 1889, at Anton Rubinstein’s personal request, he also served as inspector of the singing classes. In 1890, he took charge of the diction class for singers. His students included P. Andreev, V. Annenkov, S. Gabel, I. Gordy, I. Grigorovich, L. Donskoy, E. Koncha, E. Kossetskaya, A. M. Labinsky, Ya. Medvedev, B. Mezentsev, K. Mikhailov-Stoyan, D. Mirskaya, O. Svyatlovskaya, S. Tamarova, N. Unkovsky, and N. Figner.
Samus died in Saint Petersburg on December 7, 1903, and was buried at the Literary Bridges section of Volkov Cemetery.