Musicology Annotation << Back A Great Singer With Great Love for a Great Composer. To the 150th Anniversary of the Birth of F.I. Chaliapin Demchenko Alexander I. One of the most important facets of Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin’s art was associated with the popularization of the creative heritage of Modest Petrovich Musorgsky. It is noteworthy that the moment of the artist’s genuine breakthrough to the phenomenon, which over time began to be defi ned by the epithet «great singer», was primarily associated with the performance of Boris Godunov’s part in Mussorgsky’s opera of the same name. Chaliapin’s triumphant performances in the West were largely determined by his participation in the performances of «Boris Godunov». Most of all, Chaliapin and Mussorgsky had in common the desire for truth in art, which in both was determined by the assertion of a principle that can be formulated as «meaningfully intonated speech». The performing practice of the great singer gave many examples of overcoming the boundary between art and life. And Chaliapin found the highest synthesis of the word and the muzika, leading to the comprehension of the truth of life, in Mussorgsky’s opera dramas. He managed to implement this synthesis with complete and hardly attainable artistic perfection, because here he achieved that supreme truth of expression when word and music, speech and chant merge together, and opera ceases to be opera in the usual sense, turning into a special form of fixing the flow of life itself. The vocal theater characteristic of Chaliapin was vividly represented in the works of the chamber genre, where the performance of Mussorgsky’s «Song of the Flea» was a universally recognized masterpiece. Keywords: the art of F.Chaliapin, popularization of the creative heritage of M. Mussorgsky. DOI: 10.25791/musicology.3.2023.1302 Pp. 03-07.