Mark Reizen

Mark Osipovich Reizen (1895-1992) was a leading Soviet-era opera singer with a beautiful and expansive bass voice. Reizen was born into a Jewish family of mine workers in 1895. He had four brothers and a sister, and all were musically trained, playing mandolin, guitar, balalaika and accordion. He served as a soldier in the First World War. Then he studied as an engineer, but also as a singer at the Kharkiv conservatory with the Italian professor Federico Bugamelli in 1919-1920.