Alexander and Lydia Vertinsky: 34 years of age difference, 15 years of happiness and more than half a century of loyalty

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

He was a famous actor and singer, and she was a young admirer of his talent. When Alexander Vertinsky and Lydia Tsirgvava met, he was already 51 years old, and she managed to celebrate only her 17th birthday. He already had an unsuccessful experience in family life, she was also a very young and inexperienced girl in amorous affairs. But can age be a hindrance to happiness? Alexander and Lydia Vertinsky lived together for only 15 years, and then Lydia Vladimirovna kept loyalty to her husband for more than half a century.

Talent and fan

Alexander Vertinsky emigrated from the Soviet Union back in 1920, lived in Turkey, Poland, Germany. Later he stayed in Paris for several years, moved to America and in 1935 he moved to Manchukuo, lived in Harbin, then moved to Shanghai.

He married at the age of 30, but he categorically did not like to remember his marriage to Irina Vertidis, preferring to call his only wife a girl whom he met behind the scenes of one of the clubs in Shanghai after his concert.

Lydia Tsirgvava, a 17-year-old beauty, did not know the end of her fans. She was pretty and very self-willed, always strived to break the rules and loved to listen to songs performed by Alexander Vertinsky, one of the most famous chansonniers of that time.

After the concert, they managed to talk and both were captured by their own feelings. Lydia, with all the fervor of her youth, fell in love with a middle-aged, but such a charming artist. Needless to say that Alexander Vertinsky was ready to throw the whole world at the feet of young Lydia on the very first evening?

But Lydia's mother (the girl's father died when she was only 10 years old), objected to her daughter's relationship with a man who was 34 years older. Nevertheless, the lovers continued to meet, when Vertinsky went on tour, he wrote letters from everywhere. Later, the great singer will say about Lydia: "The Lord God sent her to me."

The wayward girl did not want to listen to her mother's arguments. She loved and was able to convince her mother to give her consent to the marriage of her daughter with Alexander Vertinsky. On May 26, 1942, they got married, and in July 1943, the couple had their first daughter, Marianne.

Soon after the birth of his daughter, Alexander Vertinsky was allowed to return to his homeland. He had been striving for this since the mid-1930s, and in the spring of 1943 he wrote a letter to Vyacheslav Molotov with a request to still give him the opportunity to share her fate with the Motherland in difficult times.

In November of the same year, he finally arrived in Moscow with his wife and three-month-old Marianne. A little over a year later, the youngest daughter Anastasia was born in the Vertinsky family.

Love

They had a very happy and harmonious family. Alexander Vertinsky idolized his wife, he considered her an ideal, constantly spoiled Lydia and his daughters.

They lived quite differently from how Soviet families lived at that time. Lydia Vertinskaya did not manage the household, the house was run by her grandmother Lydia Pavlovna. She cooked beautifully, while she could treat guests with dishes of Russian and Georgian cuisine, and also Chinese and Korean.

The bonns were engaged in the upbringing of Marianne and Anastasia, and the father's attempt to acquaint the girls with the realities of life, sending them to the pioneer camp, turned out, according to Alexander Vertinsky, to be his most disastrous undertaking. After returning from the camp, the intelligent parents were shocked by the mannerisms of their daughters. Marianna and Anastasia could now use an obscene word in their speech, and at dinner, instead of the decorous use of cutlery, they could discourage their parents by greedily stuffing food into their mouths with their hands.

After the family moved to Moscow, as well as in Shanghai, Lydia Vertinskaya could well afford not to work. True, once director Alexander Ptushko met the chansonnier's wife and immediately invited Lydia Vertinskaya to play the role of the Phoenix bird in his fairy tale "Sadko". After she starred in four more films, but did not treat this work as a profession.

She was really happy: she had the best husband in the world, two adorable daughters and a job that made her famous and recognizable. But Alexander Vertinsky himself always remembered his age and wondered how his wife and girls would live if he was gone.

It was on his advice that Lydia Vertinskaya became a student at the faculty of painting at the Surikov Institute in Moscow, and after receiving her diploma she became an artist at a printing plant.

Loyalty

Two years after Lydia Vertinskaya graduated from the institute, Alexander Vertinsky died suddenly. After a concert in Leningrad at the House of Stage Veterans, he returned to the hotel, went to bed and never woke up. His heart stopped on May 21, 1957.

Lydia Vladimirovna was then only 34 years old. Now she had to become the head of the family and be responsible not only for herself, but also for her daughters. She was very upset about her husband's departure and continued to love him until the end of her days. Even in the house, she did not change anything after the death of her husband, she only sold some things that Alexander Nikolaevich had acquired at one time "for a rainy day."

There were enough applicants for her hand and heart, but Lydia Vertinskaya could not even imagine another man next to her. She answered all the proposals with a categorical refusal. For her, there has always been only one man, her beloved husband Alexander Vertinsky.

She was proud of the successes of her daughters, although she constantly made comments to them: they did not sit on the stage like this, they did not stand like that. She wanted her girls to be queens and nothing else.

Lydia Vertinskaya outlived her husband by 56 years. And she always remembered with gratitude and love the person who gave her his love, taught her to be happy, opened the whole world. She was faithful to him for more than half a century and never once doubted the exceptional correctness of the decision.

Vertinsky's voice and manner of performance - a melodious and cutesy recitative with expressive grassing - is impossible not to recognize or confuse with someone. Vertinsky is a NAME-legend, and there is no other like that. Possessing a unique charm and aristocratic magic, he, like a hypnotist, skillfully controlled the mood of the audience in the hall.