A bass voice with a range exceeding four octaves, Ivan Rebroff has enjoyed success in interpreting traditional Russian songs and a variety of arias. Born Hans Rolf Rippert in Berlin on July 31, 1931, he grew up in the Spandau district, then in Belzig and Halle, where he sang in the town choir, before studying from 1951 to 1959 at the Hamburg State University of Music. Of Russian origin, as he may or may not have claimed, he learned the Eastern European folk repertoire from his teacher Adolf Detel, which enabled him to join the Black Sea Cossack Choir and the Ural Cossack Choir. After winning first prize at the ARD International Competition in Munich in 1960, the two-meter-tall giant with the stentorian voice made his debut at the Gelsenkirchen Opera (until 1963), then in Frankfurt (from 1963 to 1969). He distinguished himself in many roles, including The Barber of Seville, Boris Godunov, La Bohème, The Knight of the Rose, Don Carlos, Faust and operettas such as Sang viennois, The Gypsy Baron and The Bat, under the baton of Carlos Kleiber. A foot injury sustained in Munich in Orphée aux enfers kept him away from the stage. The singer used this time off to record a first album of his favorite arias under a pseudonym, which changed the course of his career and led to a contract with the CBS label. In his Cossack outfit, Ivan Rebroff became a much sought-after television performer, racking up gold records and being offered the role of the milkman in the musical Un violon sur le toit, where his rendition of the aria "Ah! Si j'étais riche" became a hit. After almost 1,500 performances, he continued to record Russian songs such as "Kalinka", "Katyusha" (which launched the "casatchok" dance), "Moscow Nights", "Plaine, ma plaine" and "Les Yeux Noirs", also sung in German, alongside popular melodies in a repertoire that he continued to expand on numerous tours. Awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1985, he performed in the USSR in 1989, forming a bass trio with Gunther Emmerlich and Günter Wewel. A regular performer right up to his final days, he was hospitalized in Vienna after a concert in December 2007, before dying of cardiac arrest in Frankfurt on February 27, 2008, at the age of 76.
