Wife, mother and "native stepmother" Riva Levite: How the director became the founder of the Dvorzhetsky acting clan

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

She was young, talented and ambitious, and therefore, after graduating from GITIS, she firmly decided not to stay in the capital. She left for Omsk and never regretted it. It was there that she staged her first performance and met the main person in her destiny. Riva Levite lived with Vaclav Dvorzhetsky for more than 40 years, gave birth to a son, Eugene, who also became a famous actor. It is she who is called the founder of the Dvorzhetsky clan, and also the legend of Nizhny Novgorod. She had one more title: her own stepmother.

Choosing your own path

Probably, the life of Riva Levite, a theater director and teacher, could have turned out quite differently if the war had not started that summer, when she graduated from school. Instead of theatrical, which the young Muscovite dreamed of entering, she had to submit documents to the legal one, simply because this institute had not yet been evacuated from the capital.

The students who remained in the city did not study, but worked: they dug trenches, helped take care of the wounded, donated blood. It happened to them a little later, when the enemy came close to Moscow, also go to the rear. Returning from the evacuation, Riva Levite immediately took the documents from the legal office and went to the studio school at the Mossovet Theater, which was headed by Yuri Zavadsky. The girl met him back in the evacuation in Alma-Ata.

When she was already in her second year, Yuri Zavadsky advised her and Anatoly Efros to pay attention to directing and even gave a letter of recommendation to the dean of the directing department at GITIS. Young people were admitted immediately to the second year. The girl graduated from the institute with honors, and the same Yuri Zavadsky advised her to get a job as an assistant director in the capital's theater.

But Riva dreamed of working independently and decided to go to Omsk, accepting the proposal of the theater director, who spoke beautifully about the prospects of a large industrial city and a wonderful team. Almost on the very first day, she saw Romeo and Juliet on the stage of the Omsk theater, where Benvolio and Mercutio played Vaclav Dvorzhetsky and Gennady Nezhnov. At the same time, instead of the text of Shakespeare, they read the most perfect gag, while preserving, however, the content of the scene.

And after talking with the director, she saw all the same Dvorzhetsky and Nezhnova, who were obviously waiting for her at the exit and discussing the "metropolitan fifa." Then she did not yet know that in the person of Vaclav Dvorzhetsky she met her fate. He began to show Riva signs of attention almost from the first rehearsal.

Unifying Force

The first to meet Riva was Vladislav, the son of Wenceslas from his first marriage with the ballerina Taisia Ray. With his mother, the actor has not lived together for a long time, but they have maintained quite a warm relationship. The dorm room, where the actor's heir lived with his mother and grandmother, was located directly opposite Riva's room. Once there was a knock on her door, a thin boy entered, introduced himself and asked permission to just talk. Riva immediately realized that the baby was lacking in communication, and she happily struck up a conversation with him. As Vladislav Dvorzhetsky himself later joked, at first he made friends with Riva, and after that they hooked up dad.

Vaclav Dvorzhetsky courted Riva persistently, and the girl opened in him a deep mind, an extraordinary look at the world around him and noted an incredible acting talent. It was always interesting with him whether they were discussing a new production, watching a movie or visiting some kind of exhibition. Therefore, when Vaclav Janovich proposed to the girl, she simply replied: "Good."

They went and signed, and her relatives learned that Riva got married later, and even then from strangers. In the acting environment, rumors generally spread very quickly, so the news of Riva's marriage reached the capital before she was about to inform them.

In Omsk, they dissuaded her from marrying Dvorzhetsky: he served twice in the camps, had two children from different women, and he could not live in Moscow and Leningrad because of his previous convictions. But Riva Levite was notable for her steely character and did not change her decisions. She knew the history of her husband's previous relationship, and she was also aware that, in addition to Vladik, his daughter Tatyana was also growing up, with whose mother the actor met while serving his second prison term. He was not going to marry then, but the girl was in love with him and a baby was born.

Vaclav Yanovich helped her all his life, sent money to Chisinau, where his daughter and mother lived. Tatiana was only 9 years old when her mother died. A girl who lived with her mother's friend, at the age of 15, sent a telegram to her father that she could no longer. At that time he was on vacation in Yalta, but immediately got into the car, followed his daughter and brought her to Nizhny Novgorod, where they already lived with Riva and little Eugene, their son.

So Riva Levite was able to unite all the Dvorzhetskys around her. She sincerely loved all members of her unexpectedly large family, and her husband and children answered her in full reciprocity. It was Vladislav who first began to call her "his own stepmother." She really was dear to all of them: she helped, instructed, gave wise advice.

Legendary person

Unfortunately, she had to outlive them all. Son Eugene, with whom Riva Yakovlevna always had a very trusting relationship, became a famous actor. He was only 39 years old when he crashed in a car. Vladislav Dvorzhetsky, who also chose the acting profession, suddenly died of a heart attack while touring in Gomel. And he was also 39 years old at the time of his death. Tatiana, suffering from a complex heart disease since childhood, lived for 48 years, although the doctors assumed that she would not live up to 30.

In 1993, Riva Levite's beloved husband passed away. He was ill for a very long time, practically stopped seeing, but until the end of his days he did not leave his work in the cinema, memorizing the roles by ear.

Riva Yanovna, even after all the losses she experienced, called herself a very happy wife and mother. She did not break down, did not give up, she just lived and tried to convey to the young her experience, her knowledge, her ideas about art in general and about the acting profession in particular. For 55 years she taught at the Nizhny Novgorod Theater School, for the last 37 years she was in charge of the acting department. And she wrote the book "Vaclav Dvorzhetsky - Dynasty".

Riva Levite taught Irina Mazurkevich and Alexander Pankratov-Cherny, Anastasia Zavolokina and Andrei Ilyin, Ekaterina Vilkova, Natalia Bochkareva, Elena Surodeikina and many other wonderful actors. And she was always in touch with her graduates, communicating with them via the Internet. For her, there were no difficulties in mastering new technologies, and communication with young people allowed the wonderful teacher not to grow old in soul.

In Nizhny Novgorod, where the director lived most of her life, she was called a legend and the face of the Nizhny Novgorod theater school. Riva Levite passed away in March 2019, when she was already 96 years old.

Yevgeny Dvorzhetsky, the son of Riva Levite and Vaclav Dvorzhetsky, died at the age of 39, just like his half-brother Vladislav. The famous acting dynasty seemed to be pursued by an evil fate. The circumstances of the death of the two brothers were very similar …