Halima Nosirova

Halima Nosirova was born on 29 December 1913 in the village of Taglyk near Kokand (now in Fergana Region), the ninth child of her family, and was raised in a children’s home. From 1924 to 1927 she studied at the Baku Theatre Technical School with a group of young people from Uzbekistan.

Her stage career began in 1927 as a drama actress, first in the Uzbek state model troupe in Samarkand and, from 1929, at the Hamza Theatre in Tashkent. Her roles included Maria Antonovna in Gogol’s “The Government Inspector”, Adelma in Gozzi’s “Turandot” and Gulchohra in Hajibeyov’s “Arshin Mal Alan”. From 1930 she was a soloist of the Uzbek musical drama theatre (the State Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1939, today the Navoi Theatre).

In 1934–1937 she studied at the Uzbek opera studio of the Moscow Conservatory. After the Decade of Uzbek Art held in Moscow in May 1937 she was named People’s Artist of the USSR, at the age of twenty-three.

From 1939 she was the theatre’s leading soloist. She sang the principal parts in “Buran” (1939), “Leyli and Majnun” (1940), “Ulugbek” (1942), “Carmen” (1944, in Uzbek), “Gulsara” and “Tahir and Zuhra” (1949) and “Hamza” (1962); her Maysara in “Maysara’s Pranks” was one of the first comic characters of the Uzbek opera stage. In concert she sang maqom melodies, “Tanovar”, modern songs and the songs of other peoples, and toured East Germany, China, India, Indonesia and Iran.

She was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the fifth convocation, graduated from the Tashkent Conservatory in 1977 and taught there in the department of Eastern music in 1979–1986. She published memoirs, “The Sun over the East: Notes of an Actress” (1962) and “I Am an Uzbek Girl” (Men o'zbek qiziman, 1968).

Halima Nosirova died in Tashkent on 3 January 2003 and was buried at the Chigatay Cemetery.