30 August 2011, 19:09 Culture

Slavic woman with Persian eyes

Russian romance singer Alla Bayanova has died

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Alla Bayanova during a gala concert dedicated to the singer’s 95th anniversary

ITAR-TASS Alla Bayanova, a singer with an amazing destiny, died in Moscow at the age of 97: she sang Russian romances with Alexander Vertinsky and Pyotr Leshchenko, performed them in Paris, Palestine and Bucharest, and deservedly received the title of People's Artist of Russia.

Today, August 30, at the age of 98, the singer, performer of Russian romances, People's Artist of Russia Alla Bayanova died in a Moscow hospice after a long illness .

Alla Bayanova was born in 1914 in Chisinau - then it was part of the Russian Empire. But after the First World War and two revolutions, Bessarabia became part of Romania, and in 1918 her family moved to Paris, where Alla began her journey in art at the age of 9. At first she helps her father, a pop singer, then performs on her own - and after 4 years she is noticed by Alexander Vertinsky .

As Bayanova recalled, Vertinsky was her “first and greatest love”

he called the young singer “a Slav with Persian eyes” and invited her to his program. The collaboration lasted only two years, then her family left Paris, Bayanova herself constantly tours - Yugoslavia, Germany, the Middle East, Egypt. But she ended up in Bucharest, where she lived for the next 60 years.

In Romania, she met Petr Leshchenko - not yet a famous singer, but just the owner of a bar in which a young but already experienced singer performed. Bayanova's repertoire included Russian romances - both in Russian and translated into Romanian - and with the outbreak of World War II, the Romanian authorities considered it unpatriotic, and the singer found herself under police surveillance. But even after the liberation of Romania, she was not allowed to sing - this was due to the fact that her second husband was a Romanian landowner. She returned to the stage again only in the 50s - and performed until the end of the 70s, when Ceausescu’s nationalist policies again prevented her from singing what she had been performing all her life.

Alla Bayanova said that she could not come to the USSR for a long time.

The first, short, only three weeks, visit took place only in 1976, when the singer was already 62 years old. Then there were several more tours - and in 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev granted Bayanova Soviet citizenship. She moved, fearing that she would not be able to get settled, that no one would help. But the fears turned out to be in vain: by this time, Bayanova had already released several records on Melodiya, they knew and loved her, they helped with organizing concerts, and with new recordings, and with a house, allocating an apartment on Old Arbat

She performed in Russia for twenty years - from the moment she arrived until her last concert, a solo program in honor of her 95th anniversary. The 80th and 85th anniversary of the singer’s creative activity were widely celebrated, and Joseph Kobzon , Lyudmila Zykina and Nikolai Slichenko came to congratulate her .

In 1993, she was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Russia, and six years later, Alla Bayanova also became a national title - deservedly so.

“The stage gives me the strength to live,” she said and, as if explaining her creative longevity, added that “romance will always be in fashion.”