Klavdia Shulzhenko and Vladimir Coralli: love on the concert stage

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

How do you feel about "railway romances"? Can two people who meet in a train carriage and meet under the measured clatter of wheels find happiness? Such a couple, who met on the train, were the famous singer Klavdia Shulzhenko and Odessa coupletist Vladimir Coralli.

Meeting in the carriage

In the winter of 1929, Shulzhenko, together with other artists, went to Nizhny Novgorod for the opening of the concert hall. They met a few minutes after the train left the platform for communication, they had twelve hours left. During this time, the singer and the coupletist managed to tell each other their paths in life, amuse each other with acting tales and find many common interests.

During the conversation, Vladimir Coralli drew attention to the hands of the interlocutor and saw a ring on his finger. Shulzhenko explained that she has a fiancé and invited a new acquaintance to the wedding. Coralli agreed to come to the celebration, but with only one condition: he himself will take the place of the groom.

They celebrated the New Year together in a restaurant, Klavdia Ivanovna accepted a new marriage proposal. An obstacle on the way of the couple in love was Mrs. Kemper, the adored mother of Vladimir Coralli. Her eldest son brought a daughter-in-law with the patronymic Ivanovna to the family, and the second also wants to marry Ivanovna. Coralli Jr. could not upset his mother and stopped seeing his bride.

However, the artists are often touring people and fate decided to bring the couple together in Kharkov at a concert in honor of May Day. Even the previous groom, the artist Grigoriev, who tried to return the bride, could not spoil the plans of fate. Competitors and Shulzhenko met after the concert. Coralli was jealous of the bride and snatched the briefcase from her hands. Grigoriev tried to humiliate the enemy, calling him "an actor", but then Shulzhenko herself intervened, tired of the claims of the ex-groom who did not appreciate her. A scuffle began between the men, but Grigoriev quickly retreated, seeing the Browning in Coralli's hand.

After this incident, Coralli managed to persuade his mother and get her blessing for the marriage. Claudia and Vladimir signed in Kharkov in May 1930, the singer took the double surname Shulzhenko-Kemper.

Time to make a career

From the beginning of the thirties and until the very war, the creative duet of Klavdia Shulzhenko and Vladimir Coralli successfully toured the country. A talented actor with extensive performance experience became his wife's producer. The peak of his career was the production of "Map of October", in which he revealed all his talents.

In those years, he was the main breadwinner of the family. Gradually, Vladimir Coralli involved his wife in theatrical performances. Once Shulzhenko took part in the play together with Leonid Utesov. Suddenly, the singer became ill, and she quietly complained to her partner, confessing to him that she was pregnant.

Soon Shulzhenko and Coralli had a son, Igor. By the mid-thirties, Coralli's career as a couplet and phrasebook was almost over. It became simply dangerous to joke from the stage, and Vladimir completely switched to his wife. Shulzhenko began a real rise in popularity. Her songs were released on records, concerts were held to thunderous applause. At the same time, there was an affair with the pianist Ilya Jacques.

Coralli was jealous, but managed to save the family, threatening his wife to take his son and give him to his Odessa grandmother. The war forced to forget about family dramas, the couple volunteered and began to give concerts at the front. The songs sung by Shulzhenko during the war years have become a real legend. She, with the support of her husband, gave more than 500 concerts in front of the military. The name Shulzhenko saved the life of her husband. While visiting his mother's grave, he ran into a deserter who was trying to shoot Coralli. The man let go of the victim, having learned that in front of him was the husband of a famous singer.

In the postwar years, Shulzhenko became a real pop star. The popular singer sang songs of the war years and new hits, there were just an uncountable number of concerts.

Divorce

Georgy Epifanov and Klavdiya Shulzhenko met when he was 39, and she was 50 years old, and threw themselves into this late love, like into a whirlpool - headlong. By that time, Shulzhenko and Coralli, who had lived together for twenty-five years, had already raised a son and had grandchildren. And then in 1956 a divorce happened. Why? Some say Coralli cheated on his wife with a young dancer. Others argue that the husband was tired of his wife's betrayal and did not forgive her an affair with Epifanov. But still the divorce took place. Offended by his wife, Coralli decided to divide everything he had acquired in half - everything to the smallest detail.

The angry singer coldly suggested that her ex-husband share her earrings at the same time, one for each. In the end, he exchanged a three-room apartment and turned it into a communal apartment, adding another family to his ex-wife. The son already had his own family, and he lived separately, so Klavdia Ivanovna was left completely alone. She lived on retirement, selling precious things she had earned over the years of fame.

But fate gave this incredible woman another chance to become happy, another man appeared in her life. But Shulzhenko did not officially get married a second time, and Coralli never married again. The singer died in 1984, and in 1996 Vladimir Coralli left this world. According to the will of the Odessa coupletist, he was buried next to his beloved woman - Claudia Shulzhenko.

It remains to be noted that Soviet critics in the 1930s national love for Shulzhenko was not shared … Read about it in one of our reviews.