Pianist Svyatoslav Richter and opera diva Nina Dorliak: High love or a comfortable screen?

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

Svyatoslav Richter and Nina Dorliak have lived together for over 50 years. And all my life they turned to each other on "you". Was it a high love, or the great musician's innate tact and pity did not allow him to leave? However, it is possible that this union was just a screen behind which a completely different love was hiding?

Music as an excuse for dating

Today there are two versions of Svyatoslav Richter's acquaintance with Nina Dorliak. Vera Prokhorova, who calls herself the pianist's friend and his only close person, writes that Nina's mother, a conservatory teacher, turned to the pianist, already quite famous at that time, and asked to make an ensemble with Nina. And already on tour in Tbilisi, they had great success, after which Nina decided that Svyatoslav was suitable for her as a life partner.

It can be assumed that in this description there is a certain amount of deceit. Especially in the moment where Vera Ivanovna says that by the time she met Richter, Nina Dorliak “sang some hits from the stage. But she never had a special voice."

You can listen to her silvery voice, preserved on the few audio recordings of that time. Or, in the biography of Nina Lvovna herself, you can find confirmation that, before meeting Richter in 1943, she quite successfully and repeatedly performed with the famous organist Alexander Fedorovich Gedike, the founder of the Soviet organ school. Nina Dorliak also gave concerts with the very talented pianist Nina Musinyan, with eminent pianists Abram Dyakov, Maria Grinberg, Boris Abramovich, Konstantin Igumnov and Maria Yudina. While still studying at the conservatory, the singer sang the part of Suzanne in Le Nozze di Figaro, after which Georg Sebastian, the famous conductor, invited the singer to perform with him in a chamber program consisting of works by Brahms, Wagner, Schubert. Moreover, Nina Lvovna taught at the Moscow Conservatory since 1935.

All this was before meeting and cooperation with Svyatoslav Richter. In this situation, the version voiced by Nina Dorliak herself seems more plausible.

She says that she met Richter during the war, and at first they only greeted each other, meeting, then the acquaintance became closer. And after the meeting at the Philharmonic, he asked permission to hold it. It was then that he invited Nina Lvovna to give a joint concert. He was already very famous, and Nina decided that he was proposing to split the concert into two parts. In the first she will perform herself, and in the second he will play.

But Svyatoslav Teofilovich wanted to accompany Nina Lvovna throughout the concert. So their creative tandem began. They began to rehearse together at Nina Lvovna's house. And gradually the creative tandem grew into a life duet.

Extraordinary romance

In 1944, Nina Lvovna's mother, Ksenia Nikolaevna Dorliak, died. The young woman was left alone, with her little nephew Mitya in her arms. And only after recovering from the loss of a loved one, Nina Lvovna resumes rehearsals with Richter.

They worked on Prokofiev's music. At some point, The Ugly Duckling touched Nina Lvovna's heart so much that she burst into tears right at the piano. And tearing her hands off her face, she saw tears in the eyes of Svyatoslav Teofilovich. They shared both music and loss.

In 1945, according to the testimony of Nina Dorliak, Svyatoslav Richter invited her to live together. He moved in with her, honestly warning that he is a rather complex person and will disappear from time to time, that he needs it.

About the same period, Vera Prokhorova writes that Nina Dorliak suppressed Svyatoslav Richter, she blackmailed him with tears, which he absolutely could not stand. She took all the money from him, and he was forced to borrow. He hid from her with friends, and she found him.

And the words of Svyatoslav Richter himself, said about Nina Lvovna at the end of his life, in Bruno Monsengen's film "Richter, the Unconquered", look very contrasting against this background. The great pianist speaks of Nina Lvovna not only as a singer, he adds the phrase: "She looked like a princess." Not a queen, tough, domineering, authoritarian. Princess - light, sweet, airy.

Music and life

Over time, Svyatoslav Teofilovich stopped studying with Nina Lvovna, having no time for this. But to this day, the recordings of Nina Dorliak have survived, where she is accompanied by the great maestro. From these records one can judge how harmonious their creative union was. It seems that the voice is overflowing with the sounds of the piano, and the piano suddenly sings like a silvery soprano.

Yuri Borisov in his book "Towards Richter" describes the musician's associations about his life with Nina Lvovna. The great maestro confessed his love while studying the eighteenth sonata. Then there were "interruptions of feelings" in their lives, when they quarreled violently, and he left to sit on a bench. She knew where to find him, but she never followed him. (This is said by Svyatoslav Teofilovich himself). He returned and walked silently to his room.

And in the morning he was certainly greeted by the aroma of coffee, freshly ironed shirts were waiting, and there was homemade mayonnaise for the vinaigrette on the table. Richter says that this is, of course, a way of life, but a way of life "poeticized" by Nina Lvovna.

As long as I live, I will be with you …

In recent years, when the illness broke down Svyatoslav Teofilovich, Nina Lvovna did not leave him for a second. She became his "sister of mercy", as he himself admits in a short message published in the book of Valentina Chemberdzhi "About Richter in his words."

And Nina Dorliak herself survived her spouse by only nine months. She was seriously ill after his death, yearned and did not know what to do with herself without him.

In 2015, in Inga Karetnikova's memoirs, it suddenly comes to the musician's gay orientation. The author and film critic categorically claims that everyone knew about it, and Nina Lvovna served only as a screen for the authorities.

But what to do with the whole 52 years of the singer's and musician's life together? And numerous friends and admirers of Svyatoslav Richter, who could not fail to notice such an addiction, so unusual for that time. Even Vera Prokhorova, refusing to accept the very fact of love between Richter and Dorliak, never mentions his weakness for the male sex.

It seems that the relationship between the great Richter and his wife will excite the minds for a long time and cause a desire to find grains of truth.

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