18.05.2024
Romances performed by Alla Bayanova to mark her 110th birth jubilee
110 years ago, on May 18, 1914, the prominent singer Alla Bayanova was born. Romances performed by the distinguished Alla Bayanova, digitised from gramophone records stored in the “Music Records” are posted in the museum Phonotheque.
Alla Bayanova (née Levitskaya) is a Romanian, Soviet and Russian pop singer, performer of Russian and Gypsy romances, folk songs, and composer.
Alla was born on May 18, 1914 in Kishinev. Her parents were Nikolai Levitsky, a popular opera singer at the time (his stage name was Nikolai Bayanov) and her mother Eugenia Skorodinskaya, a corps de ballet dancer from a well-known landowning family.
Alla's father was at war; he returned from the front in 1918, when Bessarabia fell to Romania, and took the family to Paris. Alla attended school at a Catholic convent and on Thursdays attended a gymnasium for children of Russian emigrants. In Paris and made The artistic debut of nine-year-old Alla came off in Paris – the girl performed in tandem with her father. The success was overwhelming. And although her mother believed that "a child should study, not sing in night bars", the girl couldn't keep from singing.
There, in Paris, Alexander Vertinsky noticed thirteen-year-old Alla and invited to work. He proposed to make a joint programme in the fine restaurant "Big Moscow Hermitage". The art of Alexander Vertinsky had a huge impact on the girl; she remembered every gesture, every intonation of the "sad Pierrot" of Russian pop music. Alexander Nikolayevich called Bayanova Adelaide and "a Slav with Persian eyes". Alla used to say that she never had idols. Vertinsky was an exception. The ability to present a phrase effectively, a beautiful gesture – the singer learnt all this from Vertinsky.
In pursuit of money, the Bayanovs left Paris and began to lead a nomadic lifestyle. First they performed in Belgrade, then in Athens; they toured all over Europe; then they reached the Middle East – they visited Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. While travelling around Beirut, the artists met singer Pyotr Leshchenko. And when Pyotr opened his own restaurant in Bucharest, he invited Alla to perform there. Thus, the Romanian period of Alla Nikolaevna's life stretched for a long 60 years. She gave concerts at the restaurant "La Lescenco", where Pyotr Leshchenko himself performed accompanied by an orchestra. . Her repertoire was comprised of songs and romances borrowed from Russian Gypsies in Paris: "Two Hearts", "Moldavian Steppes", "The Song Flows", "The Night Chill Has Descended", "Everything that's happened", "Farewell, My Tabor". The romance "Two Hearts" by George Seversky was most often repeated as an encore. Bayanova noted, "I love Leshchenko very much, and his whole family. I sang with him for five years".
In 1936, Bayanova starred in the Polish comedy sound film “Dodek na froncie” by Michał Waszyński as a soloist in a gypsy ensemble.
In March 1941, after the conclusion of the alliance between Romania and Hitler's Germany, A.N. Bayanova was arrested and sent to a camp, where she spent a year and a half in detention. For singing songs in Russian she was accused of agitation in favor of the Soviet Union. After the end of the Second World War and the establishment of the socialist system in Romania, she continued to work in a restaurant in Bucharest. The artist translated popular Soviet songs into Romanian, gave concerts, toured all over the world, and in every corner of the world, she glorified her favorite Russian song. The singer is the author of about 40 songs and romances to the lyrics by Sergei Esenin, Konstantin Simonov, Tatiana Flavitskaya, Nikolai Agnivtsev.
Bayanova was bequeathed to perform for the Russian people by her father, who said that only in Russia, the homeland of her ancestors, would she feel happy. The Queen of Romance first visited Russia in 1976. Then she came back in the 1980s, when she recorded several records from the "My Songs" series. In 1986, one of A.N. Bayanova first public concerts took place in the House of Friendship with Peoples of Foreign Countries in Moscow, which immediately brought her wide fame. The 1988, the concert in Moscow at the Culture Centre named after Serafimovich was recorded and broadcast by Central Television – the prominent singer received nationwide recognition. In December 1989, Alla Bayanova was granted Russian citizenship. In 1990, a TV film "Cabaret of My Life" featuring the life of Alla Bayanova was screened.
In ten years Bayanova gave more than 1,500 concerts, posters with her photos hung all over the country. The singer's silver voice, her unusual Russian language with light accent, and the style of her songs simply captivated the audience.
In the last years of her life, Alla Bayanova suffered a series of clinical deaths, a femoral neck fracture and peritonitis. At the same time she continued to perform. Bayanova was a person of such willpower that after barely recovering, she always returned to the stage. The artist's last solo concert took place in May 2009, when she turned 95.
The singer was been married three times and did not have children.
Alla Bayanova died on August 30, 2011 in Moscow. The cause of death was leukemia. She is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. Alla Nikolayevna is known, among other things, for her artistic longevity – 80 years on the stage.
Аdapted from
- https://biographe.ru/znamenitosti/alla-bayanova
- aif.ru/culture/person/alla_bayanova_umirat_delo_skuchnoe_ya_lyublyu_zhit
- dzen.ru/a/YQbnnbMg228gQHUA
- 24smi.org/celebrity/19392-alla-baianova.html