Nikolay Figner (Николай Фигнер) sings “Oh, give me oblivion” (”О дай мне забвение, родная”)
As you have probably guessed, I’ve spent the past week listening to various versions of this aria - there aren’t a lot of other bits of ‘Dubrovsky’ available on youtube - the whole or this.
I first heard about Nilolay Figner (the role of Gherman in ‘Pilovaya Dama’ was written for him) long before my absession with opera started - at uni we studied the Narodovolcy organization (they contributed to the abolition of slavery in Russia and eventually murdered tzar Alexander II) in minute detail as one of our prossessors was a fanboy/expert on the topic and I got fascinated by one of the highranking members of this group - Vera Figner (this woman still, to this day holds the record of the longest run from the Russian political police - 5 years on the run!) Since that time, I’ve been fascinated by the dillemma: was it more bizarre for a famous operatic tenor to have a major political terrorist for a sister or the other way round?