Oda Slobodskaya sings the dramatic Tchaikovsky song “The Golden Cornfields“
Slobodskaya was born in Vilnius, then part of Russia, and studied with the formidable Natalia Iretskaya, herself a pupil of Pauline Viardot Garcia. She sang major roles in the Mariinsky theatre St Petersburg but after the Revolution and subsequent famine, she left Russia with Fyodor Chaliapin when he brought his own opera company to the west.
She eventually married and settled in London where she enjoyed great success as both a