Norayr Mnatsakanyan (, January 7, 1923 – March 25, 1986) was a Merited Artist of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (1965).
As a renowned vocal performer of Armenian traditional and gusans' music, Norayr Mnatsakanyan has become one of the most influential vocalists in the canon of Armenian national music. Owing to his dainty baritone, profound knowledge of Armenian folk music, and his mastery of the Armenian language and Armenian literature, Norayr Mnatsakanyan has been highly acclaimed among famous writers, musicologists, and Armenian folk music lovers.
Norayr Mnatsakanyan was the first among Armenian vocalists to introduce a new approach to popular songs, as well as to the musical compilations of historic and contemporary gusans (Armenian minstrels). As an accepted convention of any national folklore, the works of Armenian popular and gusans music were performed in a crude, rustic, and provincial fashion. Professional performers of the opera and classical music also tried to render these works. However, their efforts to perform them alienated these works altogether from ordinary Armenian people, since the true significance of Armenian popular music could not have been properly represented by the artificially elitist operatic genre in Soviet Armenia. With his poetic approach to these great masterpieces of Armenian traditional and gusans' music, Norayr Mnatsakanyan was the first vocalist to present them in a refined and natural fashion, granting them an unprecedented simplistic register of artistic sophistication. Unlike his predecessors, Mnatsakanyan attempted to convey these works with a deep sense of harmony and in a previously impregnable unison with the authors' characteristic mentality and sentiments reflected in their compilations.
At the same time, Norayr Mnatsakanyan meticulously pursued to eliminate the provincial character of the songs that had wandered among the Armenian people for centuries. Thus, Norayr Mnatsakanyan's performances are exceptional because they masterfully immerse into the poetic essence of the literary work and unify it with the melody of the song. Norayr Mnatsakanyan also performed songs by famous Armenian composers interwoven with lyrics by such famous Armenian poets, as Avetik Isahakian, Vahan Terian, Hovhannes Shiraz. Perhaps the greatest Armenian lyricist - Avetik Isahakian - highly valued Mnatsakanyan's contributions to the canon of Armenian performing arts and proclaimed Norayr "the velvety voice" of Armenia. Derenik Demirchian marvelled at Norayr's performances in the poetic circles of the old Yerevan, calling Norayr Mnatsakanyan "a unique vocal interpreter of the popular consciousness, scattered bits of which are present in every Armenian individual." Being an art critic himself, Mnatsakanyan always conveyed great significance to the unity of the melody and the lyrics in whatever he performed.
Biography
Norayr Mnatsakanyan was born on January 7, 1923, in an old Yerevan family. He inherited the love for traditional music from his parents. Possessing an ever singing spirit of a talented youth, Norayr Mnatsakanyan won his first prize at the young performers' competition held in Moscow in 1936. Owing to his extraordinary vocal qualities and his passion for acting, Mnatsakanyan started his career as actor and singer at the Yerevan State Theater of Musical Comedy after Hakob Paronian. As surprising as it may seem, Mnatsakanyan played the first Gikor on the Armenian stage in the namesake performance based on Hovhannes Tumanyan's famous . Mnatsakanyan's artistic talent and his reverence for the Theater drove him to work with such eminent theatrical stage directors as Armen Gulakian. Mnatsakanyan also had the honor of working with the "titans" of the Armenian theatrical arts at the Yerevan State Academic Theater after Gabriel Sundukian: Vahram Papazian, Hrachia Nersisyan, Avet Avetisyan, Hambardzum Khachanyan, Babken Nersisyan, Metaksia Simonyan, the late Mher Mkrtchyan, and Khoren Abrahamyan. Norayr Mnatsakanyan's acting, apart from his artistic talent, vouched for his unsurpassed mastery of World Literature. After seeing Mnatsakanyan's rehearsal in the role of the Shakespearean Othello, Vahram Papazian highly praised Norayr for his excellent rendition of Othello's protagonistic pathos and antagonistic callousness, and foresaw a bright future for him in acting. Mnatsakanyan later played one of the leading roles in A Man from Olympus (Chelovek iz Olimpa)(Armenfilm, 1974).