Opera Singer. A baritone of wide repertoire, he is remembered as a comprimatio, one of the often nameless and faceless individuals who have to build their followings over a span of years by going on stage every night to sing a multiplicity of roles in a variety of languages, thereby providing the backbone for opera. The child of nobility, he was raised in St. Petersburg, trained at the Imperial Naval Academy, and served in the Russian Navy during World War I. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he resigned his commission and began musical study with his mother. Mr. Cehanovsky made his 1920 professional debut with a St. Petersburg recital, then spent the next two years refining his skills in a small local company. As conditions in the Soviet Union became ever more oppressive, he and his mother fled to Turkey in 1922 and almost immediately moved-on to America. For three years he sang with Fortune Gallo's San Carlo Opera, a traveling ensemble that made opera accessible to wide audiences and provided a training ground for numerous young singers. Following an audition with Wagnerian Maestro Artur Bodansky, he was signed to a Metropolitan Opera contract and bowed with the company on November 13, 1926 as Kothner in Wagner's "Die Meistersinger", in the process falling in love with the evening's Eva, soprano Elisabeth Rethberg, his feelings returned, though a wedding would not be possible for another 30 years as both were stuck in 'on-paper' marriages. Over the next 40 years, he sang 2,394 performances, passing tenor Angelo Bada's then-record of 2,170, in 97 roles, his probable signature pieces being Schaunard in Puccini's "La Boheme" and Dancaire of Bizet's "Carmen". Other of Mr. Cehanovsky's noted characters included Cesare Angelotti, the Jailer, and Scirrone from Puccini's "Tosca", Marullo and Count Ceprano of Verdi's "Rigoletto", Mandarin in Puccini's "Turandot", Montano of Verdi's "Otello", Morales in "Carmen", Sharpless and the Commissioner from Puccini's "Madame Butterfly", and Silvio of Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci"; at the Met, he was to be part of at least four world premieres, singing Cynric in Deems Taylor's "The King's Henchman" in 1927, the Prison Governor of the same composer's "Peter Ibbetson" in 1931, Thomas Morton in Howard Hanson's 1934 "Merry Mount", and in 1937, LT Reeve in Walter Damrosch's "The Man Without a Country". Mr. Cehanovsky last sang at an April 16, 1966 Gala marking the closing of the 'Old Met' at 39th and Broadway, his career overlapping those of both Bada and of tenor Charlie Anthony who by the time of his 2010 retirement has sung 2,928 times over 56 years. The first decade of his retirement was consumed by caring for his wife as Alzheimer's Disease steadily carried her into a vegetative state. Madame Rethberg's death coincided with the Met's 'Russian Opera in Russian' movement, and thus Mr. Cehanovsky was able to launch a second career, that of Russian language coach; he prepared phonetic transliterations on both paper and tape, attended rehearsals, and worked with the singers both individually and collectively. He was to help prepare the 1976 production of Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov" as well as the 1985 offering of Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin", and indeed was to create the study materials for Borodin's "Prince Igor" and several Rimsky-Korsakov pieces and give them to the Met management prior to his death. Today, he remains in second place for most performances sung at the Metropolitan, and he can be heard on Toscanini's classic preservation of "La Boheme" and on a number of 'live' performances.