Alexander Vertinsky
Encyclopedia
Alexander Nikolayevich Vertinsky ' onMouseout='HidePop("59911")' href="/topics/Kiev">Kiev
— 21 May 1957 in Leningrad
) was a Russia
n and Soviet artist, poet, singer, composer, cabaret
artist and actor who exerted seminal influence on the Russian tradition of artistic singing.
, Vertinsky was brought up by his father's sister in Kiev
, Ukraine
, then part of the Russian Empire
. He was expelled from school in 1905 and tried a variety of jobs before starting to earn his living by contributing short stories to the Kievan periodicals. In 1912, Vertinsky and his sister moved to Moscow
, where he failed in his ambition to join Konstantin Stanislavski
's Moscow Art Theatre
. During that time, he became addicted to cocaine
, a habit that would claim the life of his sister.
By 1916, Vertinsky started to employ a scenic figure of Pierrot
, with powdered face, singing miniature novellas-in-song known as ariettas, or "Pierrot's doleful ditties". Each song contained a prologue, exposition, culmination, and a tragic
finale. The novice performer was christened the "Russian Pierrot", gained renown, became an object of imitation, admiration, vilified in the press and lionized by the audiences.
Simultaneously with his booming singing career, he played screen bit parts in Aleksandr Khanzhonkov
's silent movies. From that time stems a lifelong friendship with Ivan Mozzhukhin
. His famous piece "Vashi paltsy pakhnut ladanom" was dedicated to another film star, Vera Kholodnaya
. Shortly before the October Revolution
Vertinsky devised a stage persona of Black Pierrot and started to tour Russia and Ukraine performing decadent elegies with a touch of cosmopolitan chic, such as "Kokainetka" and Tango "Magnolia" ("V bananovo-limonnom Singapure"). In the words of the British researcher Richard Stites, "Vertinsky bathed his verses in images of palm trees, tropical birds, foreign ports, plush lobbies, ceiling fans, and "daybreak on the pink-tinted sea" — precisely those things which the war-time audience craved for.
and toured Romania
n Bessarabia
, where he was declared a Soviet agent. In 1923 he performed in Poland
and Germany
, then moved to Paris
, where he would perform before the Russian émigré clientele at Montmartre cabarets for nine years.
In 1926 Vertinsky made one of the earliest recordings of the song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" ("Дорогой длинною" or "Endless Road"), written by Boris Fomin
(1900–1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii, which, with English lyrics by Gene Raskin, was a major hit for Mary Hopkin
in 1968 as Those Were the Days
.
After several successful tours in the Middle East
, Vertinsky followed the majority of well-to-do Russians to the USA, where he debuted before the audience which included Rachmaninoff
, Chaliapin
, and Marlene Dietrich
. The Great Depression
forced him to join the community of Shanghai Russians
. It was in China that he met his wife and the oldest daughter, Marianna, was born.
to Kaliningrad
. In order to feed his family, he also appeared in Soviet films, often playing prerevolutionary aristocrats, as in the screen version of Chekhov
's "Anna on the Neck" (1955). His role of an anti-Communist cardinal
in "The Doomed Conspiracy" even won him the Stalin Prize for 1951.
The artist died on May 21, 1957, at Hotel Astoria
in Leningrad
. Both his daughters, Marianna and Anastasiya
, made spectacular careers in Soviet cinema. The former conducted a much-aired liaison with Andrei Konchalovsky
, while the latter married his brother Nikita Mikhalkov
.
Vertinsky is still influential in Russian musical culture, and has been covered by the likes of Vladimir Vysotsky
and Boris Grebenshikov. There is even an album of electronic lounge covers, by the Cosmos Sound Club.
3669 Vertinskij
, discovered by Soviet
astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina
in 1982 is named after him.
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
— 21 May 1957 in Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
) was a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n and Soviet artist, poet, singer, composer, cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
artist and actor who exerted seminal influence on the Russian tradition of artistic singing.
Early years
Born out of wedlockMarriage
Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...
, Vertinsky was brought up by his father's sister in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, then part of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. He was expelled from school in 1905 and tried a variety of jobs before starting to earn his living by contributing short stories to the Kievan periodicals. In 1912, Vertinsky and his sister moved to Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where he failed in his ambition to join Konstantin Stanislavski
Konstantin Stanislavski
Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski , was a Russian actor and theatre director. Building on the directorially-unified aesthetic and ensemble playing of the Meiningen company and the naturalistic staging of Antoine and the independent theatre movement, Stanislavski organized his realistic...
's Moscow Art Theatre
Moscow Art Theatre
The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1898. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas...
. During that time, he became addicted to cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
, a habit that would claim the life of his sister.
By 1916, Vertinsky started to employ a scenic figure of Pierrot
Pierrot
Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of Pierre , via the suffix -ot. His character in postmodern popular culture—in...
, with powdered face, singing miniature novellas-in-song known as ariettas, or "Pierrot's doleful ditties". Each song contained a prologue, exposition, culmination, and a tragic
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
finale. The novice performer was christened the "Russian Pierrot", gained renown, became an object of imitation, admiration, vilified in the press and lionized by the audiences.
Simultaneously with his booming singing career, he played screen bit parts in Aleksandr Khanzhonkov
Aleksandr Khanzhonkov
Aleksandr Aleksejevich Khanzhonkov was Russia's first cinema entrepreneur. He produced Defence of Sevastopol, Russia's first feature film, and Ladislas Starevich's ground-breaking puppet animations....
's silent movies. From that time stems a lifelong friendship with Ivan Mozzhukhin
Ivan Mozzhukhin
Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin (Russian: Иван Ильич Мозжухин was a Russian silent film actor.-Career in Russia:Mozzhukhin was born in Penza, Russia and studied law at Moscow State University. In 1910 he left academic life to join a troupe of traveling actors...
. His famous piece "Vashi paltsy pakhnut ladanom" was dedicated to another film star, Vera Kholodnaya
Vera Kholodnaya
Vera Vasilyevna Kholodnaya was the first star of Russian silent cinema...
. Shortly before the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
Vertinsky devised a stage persona of Black Pierrot and started to tour Russia and Ukraine performing decadent elegies with a touch of cosmopolitan chic, such as "Kokainetka" and Tango "Magnolia" ("V bananovo-limonnom Singapure"). In the words of the British researcher Richard Stites, "Vertinsky bathed his verses in images of palm trees, tropical birds, foreign ports, plush lobbies, ceiling fans, and "daybreak on the pink-tinted sea" — precisely those things which the war-time audience craved for.
Career aboard
By November 1920, Vertinsky decided to leave Russia with the bulk of his clientele. He performed in ConstantinopleConstantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
and toured Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
, where he was declared a Soviet agent. In 1923 he performed in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, then moved to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he would perform before the Russian émigré clientele at Montmartre cabarets for nine years.
In 1926 Vertinsky made one of the earliest recordings of the song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" ("Дорогой длинною" or "Endless Road"), written by Boris Fomin
Boris Fomin
Boris Ivanovitch Fomin born 1900 in Saint Petersburg and died in 1948 in Moscow) was a Russian composer of folk music. He was interred at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery in Moscow....
(1900–1948) with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii, which, with English lyrics by Gene Raskin, was a major hit for Mary Hopkin
Mary Hopkin
Mary Hopkin , credited on some recordings as Mary Visconti, is a Welsh folk singer best known for her 1968 UK number one single "Those Were The Days". She was one of the first musicians to sign to The Beatles' Apple label....
in 1968 as Those Were the Days
Those Were the Days (song)
"Those Were the Days" is a song credited to Gene Raskin, who put English lyrics to the Russian song "Dorogoi dlinnoyu" , written by Boris Fomin with words by the poet Konstantin Podrevskii. It deals with reminiscence upon youth and romantic idealism...
.
After several successful tours in the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
, Vertinsky followed the majority of well-to-do Russians to the USA, where he debuted before the audience which included Rachmaninoff
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...
, Chaliapin
Feodor Chaliapin
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer. The possessor of a large and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form.During the first phase...
, and Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
. The Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
forced him to join the community of Shanghai Russians
Shanghai Russians
The Shanghai Russians were a sizable Russian diaspora that flourished in Shanghai, China between the World Wars. By 1937 it is estimated that there were as many as 25,000 anti-Bolshevik Russians living in the city, the largest European group by far...
. It was in China that he met his wife and the oldest daughter, Marianna, was born.
Final years
In 1943 the Soviet government allowed Vertinsky to return to Russia. Despite lack of media coverage, he performed about two thousand concerts in the USSR, touring from SakhalinSakhalin
Sakhalin or Saghalien, is a large island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N.It is part of Russia, and is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast...
to Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad is a seaport and the administrative center of Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea...
. In order to feed his family, he also appeared in Soviet films, often playing prerevolutionary aristocrats, as in the screen version of Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
's "Anna on the Neck" (1955). His role of an anti-Communist cardinal
Cardinal (Catholicism)
A cardinal is a senior ecclesiastical official, usually an ordained bishop, and ecclesiastical prince of the Catholic Church. They are collectively known as the College of Cardinals, which as a body elects a new pope. The duties of the cardinals include attending the meetings of the College and...
in "The Doomed Conspiracy" even won him the Stalin Prize for 1951.
The artist died on May 21, 1957, at Hotel Astoria
Hotel Astoria
Hotel Astoria is a five-star hotel in Saint Petersburg, Russia opened in 1912. It has 213 bedrooms, including 52 suites.It is located on Saint Isaac's Square, next to Saint Isaac's Cathedral and across from the historic Imperial German Embassy...
in Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. Both his daughters, Marianna and Anastasiya
Anastasiya Vertinskaya
Anastasiya Alexandrovna Vertinskaya , a Soviet and Russian actress whose mass popularity and high critical acclaim made her one of the most distinguished figures in the history of the 20th century Soviet cinema...
, made spectacular careers in Soviet cinema. The former conducted a much-aired liaison with Andrei Konchalovsky
Andrei Konchalovsky
Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky is a Soviet-American and Russian film director, film producer and screenwriter....
, while the latter married his brother Nikita Mikhalkov
Nikita Mikhalkov
Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, actor, and head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union.Mikhalkov was born in Moscow into the distinguished, artistic Mikhalkov family. His great grandfather was the imperial governor of Yaroslavl, whose mother was a Galitzine princess...
.
Vertinsky is still influential in Russian musical culture, and has been covered by the likes of Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Vysotsky
Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky was a Soviet singer, songwriter, poet, and actor whose career had an immense and enduring effect on Russian culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street...
and Boris Grebenshikov. There is even an album of electronic lounge covers, by the Cosmos Sound Club.
Legacy
A minor planetMinor planet
An asteroid group or minor-planet group is a population of minor planets that have a share broadly similar orbits. Members are generally unrelated to each other, unlike in an asteroid family, which often results from the break-up of a single asteroid...
3669 Vertinskij
3669 Vertinskij
3669 Vertinskij is a main-belt asteroid discovered on October 21, 1982 by L. G. Karachkina at Nauchnyj.- External links :*...
, discovered by Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina
Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina
Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina is a Soviet and Ukrainian astronomer.Working at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory since 1978, she has discovered a number of asteroids, including the Amor asteroid 5324 Lyapunov and the Trojan asteroid 3063 Makhaon. She has received a Ph.D. in astronomy from I. I...
in 1982 is named after him.
Discography (Official LPs and CDs)
- 1969 Александр Вертинский (Мелодия, Д 026773-4 | Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
) - 1989 Александр Вертинский (Мелодия, М60 48689 001; М60 48691 001 | Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
) - 1994 То, что я должен сказать (Мелодия, MEL CD 60 00621 | RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
) - 1995 Песни любви (RDM, CDRDM 506089; Boheme Music, CDBMR 908089 | RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
) - 1996 Vertinski (Le Chant du Monde, LDX 274939-40 | FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
) - 1999 Легенда века (Boheme Music, CDBMR 908090 | RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
) - 2000 Vertinski (Boheme Music, CDBMR 007143 | RussiaRussiaRussia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
)