George Koudinoff, 1896 - 1969

George Koudinoff was a baritone and star of the Russian Light Opera Company in Shanghai, China. His range was such that he was sometimes favorably compared to Fedor Shaliapin. (Shaliapin himself, on a trip through the Far East, saw and praised Koudinoff.)

Koudinoff was born on 6 May 1896 in Russia. After serving in the White navy in Vladivostok, he evacuated to Harbin, where he made his first concert appearances in the mid-1920s, quickly becoming popular both there and in Shanghai, where he relocated in 1932, joining the Russian Light Opera in 1937. In 1948 he came to the United States, where he toured with Serge Jaroff's Don Cossack Choir as a soloist. He was forced to give up touring for family reasons and became a waiter at El Prado restaurant in San Francisco in the mid-1950s, continuing to work there almost until his death on 17 March 1969.

His singing career, and simultaneously the cultural life of Shanghai and Harbin in the 1920s and 1930s, are illustrated in the scrapbooks that form the basis of the collection.

Detailed processing and preservation microfilming for these materials were made possible by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by matching funds from the Hoover Institution and Museum of Russian Culture. The grant also provides for depositing a microfilm copy in the Hoover Institution Archives. The original materials and copyright to them (with some exceptions) are the property of the Museum of Russian Culture, San Francisco.

George Koudinoff Register