[1] Enjoying the cult following and supported by the popular press (which called her The Incomparable, Nesravnennaya), she toured regularly and was engaged in numerous operettas (Saffi in The Gypsy Baron by Johann Strauss, Perichole in La Perichole and Helene in Offenbach's La belle Helene), as well as operas, appearing in the Mariyinsky Theatre, as Carmen (Carmen by Georges Bizet), Amneris (Aida by Giuseppe Verdi, Dalila (Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns).

[6] After Dmitry's death (he was killed by a falling tree) Maria Tikhonovna with Nastya and two sons, Yakov and Ananiy, settled in her elderly parents' small wooden hut at the outskirts of Altukhovo.

[2] After that Vyaltseva received the role of Boulotta in Jacques Offenbach's Barbe-bleue but in 1897 left the Palm Theatre, which by now started to lose its position as the leading force of the Saint Petersburg operetta.

Kholeva took part in the formation of the singer's repertoire, now a combination of romances and Russian folk songs, and used his influence to ensure the press would respond favourably to her first solo concerts.

[13] "A serious University city, a high-brow public… But Vyaltseva arrived, sang her powerful song of overpowering love, beamed out this inimitable smile of hers and the same crowd that yesterday discussed Ibsen, was now madly calling out for Troyka and Caressed by Magic...

"As a performer of Gypsy romances M-lle Vyaltseva has no equal…The artist renders these songs masterfully and expressively, easily involving audiences into her art," wrote Odessky Listok several days later.

[14] Vyaltseva, who always dreamed of becoming an opera singer, made her debut as such in July 1902 as the lead in Georges Bizet's Carmen at the Great Hall of the Saint Petersburg conservatory.

[17] Vyaltseva's taking up the male part, that of the Demon, in Anton Rubinstein's opera of the same name, produced uproar[18][19] and Solodovnikov, under pressure, cancelled the show.

Vyaltseva's ardent passions, deep sighs, shining smiles and sparkling glances on the one hand and opera on the other, just do not mix," Yuzhny Krai opined.

[17] In 1905 Vyaltseva sang Lyubasha in the Tsar's Bride by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Mignon by Ambroise Thomas at Saint Petersburg's Olympia concert hall, again to mixed reviews.

Touring continuously, two or three times a year the singer regularly returned to the capital to perform at the Gentry assembly (Blagorodnoye sobranye), receiving up to 20 thousand rubles per show.

[9] Residing in her large house at the Moyka Street, Saint Petersburg, she spent winters in her Kamenka estate (she’d bought from Count Ignatyev) on Zapadnaya Dvina river, usually in the company of guesting students.

[13] "[You] should hear how the subtlety of the French song merges with the outburst of Gypsy emotion, how tenderly Offenbach's waltz line intertwine with fiery lyrics, to understand why the audience were transfixed,"[28] the theatre critic A. Legri wrote.

Critics also lauded her performances in Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow, Der Vogelhandler by Carl Zeller, and La belle Helene by Offenbach.

The singer gave her first charity concert long before she became a star; in December 1900 she performed at the Russian Technical society's college in Petersburg, in support of the struggling workers' families.

[29] In the Vilno region two villages destroyed by fires were built up from scratch on the money donated by Vyaltseva, who arrived at the building site to control the whole process of restoration personally.

An outspoken critic of the current tendency to use operetta as a sideshow to restaurant business, Vyaltseva in 1907 launched her own campaign for reviving the genre by stripping it of all associations with alcohol.

Once in 1909 the Yakov Shchukin's Hermitage started to advertise champagne during her shows (without informing Vyaltseva who, they knew, would have protested), the singer quit the theatre she'd spent 12 years with.

"While our France-touring divas were departing in personal carriages from rehearsals, Vyaltseva went home on foot or hired a street cabman," colleague Vladimir Krieger remembered.

When she was a choirgirl in Kiev, a seer predicted she would become famous but fall seriously ill in her prime, mentioning mysteriously "a black cloud dissected by a red thread.

As for the rest of the sum, the municipal authorities in the course of four years were to decide what it needed more, a maternity hospital bearing her name, or a hostel for orphans who were born illegitimately.

[34] In case of the city's failing to make an option, the sum should go to charities, supporting children from peasant families.Vyaltseva's houses and plots of land proved to be worthy of 567.636 rubles.

Ilya Repin in his book of memoirs Distant Closeness (Dalyokoye blizkoye) described the medical manipulations with the dying singer as "naive experiments which would make even provincial interns blush.

After the Russo-Japanese War Colonel Biskupsky, now the head of Tsar Nikolas II's personal security unit, married Vyaltseva, thus violating the unwritten code of conduct.

Vyaltseva adopted a boy, Yevgeny Kovsharov (whom she found, aged two months, in a basket under the bouquet of flowers, after one concert) and did everything to give him good care and education.

From her first sensational performance at the Moscow Hermitage theatre in 1897 onwards Vyaltseva was gaining momentum as the driving force in the field, commanding massive cult following all over the country which transcended social barriers.

[13] Russian music critics praised Vyaltseva's sensuous voice, speaking of its "thick, natural and highly original timbre,"[38] reminiscent of "a lively cello"[39] and compared her vocal style to that of Lina Cavalieri.

[40] Much has been made of Vyaltseva's fine diction, as well as her dramatic talent, stage charisma, "the magic power of gesture", the trademark 'Vyaltseva smile' and the 'hypnotic' effect the singer seemed to exert upon her audience.

[17] Music historians argued that one of the reasons for Vyaltseva's phenomenal success was the fact that she emerged at the right time with the right kind of message, as 'a ray of light' in the dense, suffocating atmosphere of the post-1905 when pessimism and premonitions for horrible things to come were strong in Russia.

[44] With her 'sunny', 'springtime' look which contrasted with the darker imagery the ethnic Roma singers like Varya Panina conveyed, Vyaltseva "was the priestess of the triumphant love," as one critic put it.