Galina Korotkevich, theater and film actress: biography and creativity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Galina Korotkevich is a Soviet and Russian theater and film actress, who became famous not only for her roles, but also for her participation in a documentary film about the siege of Leningrad. Galina Petrovna survived this ordeal, being a very young girl, but this did not prevent her from becoming a great actress later. Biography of Galina Korotkevich, her career and personal life - in this article.

Family and early years

Galina Petrovna Korotkevich was born on August 18, 1921 in Petrograd (modern St. Petersburg). The girl grew up in a very creative family. Her father, Pyotr Korotkevich, was a violinist and performed in restaurants, her mother, Valentina Muravyova, was a stage artist who graduated from the conservatory in the class of operetta. Galina's grandparents were also creative people - her grandfather was an organist and directed the choir at St. Catherine's Cathedral, and her grandmother, although she worked as a metallurgist at the Obukhov plant, also performed on stage, playing in the amateur theater of this plant. Of course, in suchIn an artistic family, young Galya could not choose an ordinary profession. From an early age, she sang and danced well, but she dreamed of acting profession.

Study in wartime

In 1938, immediately after leaving school, Galya Korotkevich became a student at the Leningrad Ostrovsky Theater Institute, hitting the studio of Boris Sushkevich. But the war and the blockade of Leningrad prevented her from completing her studies on time. Only in 1945, the future actress was able to return to her faculty, graduating from the institute in 1946. Throughout the blockade, she performed at the front line, raising the morale of the soldiers. As the artist herself admitted, only a soldier's ration, which all members of the creative team received, saved her from death.

Leningrad Theater

Galina Petrovna entered this theater immediately after graduation - in 1946. Then it was also called the New Theatre. The first role of Galina Korotkevich in the Leningrad City Council Theater was the girl Dara in the production of "Madam Minister". Since 1947, five more small roles have been added to her repertoire - Liza in the play "An Hour Before Dawn", Lena and Klava in "Satellites", an unnamed collective farmer in the production of "In the White World" and Chebrets in "Walking Through the Torments".

But already in 1948, Galina Petrovna made her debut in the title role, playing Sophia in "Woe from Wit". Among other outstanding works of the actress in the New Theater:

• Marianne ("The Miser"),
• Nora("Nora"),
• Laura ("Little Tragedies - Stone Guest"),
• Lutsiana ("Comedy of Errors"),
• Princess Eboli ("Don Carlos"),
• Nina ("Masquerade"),
• Sylvia ("Two Veronese"),
• Carolina ("Night Rush"),
• Hope ("The Last").

However, after 15 years of working on this stage, the actress felt stuck in the same type of roles and did not advance in creativity. In 1961, she left the Lensoviet Theatre.

Komissarzhevskaya Theater

In this theater actress Galina Korotkevich was invited for a long time, and now she decided to change the stage. Even then, the actress felt that this was her native scene. And so it turned out, because Galina Petrovna has been serving in the Komissarzhevskaya Theater for 56 years! Her introductory performance was a production of Maxim Gorky's play "Children of the Sun", where the actress played the role of Lisa. In 1964, Korotkevich played the role of Epifania in a production of Bernard Shaw's play The Millionaire. This role was and remains one of the favorites of the actress herself. She has played it over 800 times.

Followed by a variety of roles, among which are the following:

• Cleopatra Lvovna ("There is enough simplicity for every wise man").
• Queen Elizabeth ("Giordano Bruno").
• Zinochka ("Snowstorm").
• Aunt Sachiko ("Don't worry Mom").
• Stepmother ("Cinderella").
• Baroness ("Joseph Schweik vs. Franz Josef").
• Alice ("Play Strindberg").
• Dzneladze ("Return to Life").
• Clara Zetkin ("Blue Horses on Red Grass").
• Lady Bracknell ("The Importance of Being Earnest").
• Aunt Sally ("Down the Mississippi River").
• Medduna ("Last Love of Nasreddin").
• Margaret ("The Holy Family").
• Nina Alexandrovna ("The Idiot").
• Anna Semyonovna ("A Month in the Village").

The last premiere to date with the participation of Galina Korotkevich was the 2008 play "Six Dishes from One Chicken", where she played the role of Mother. However, the actress to this day plays on the stage of the theater, over and over again successfully playing her favorite age roles.

Filmography

Being devoted to the theater with all her heart and soul, the actress starred in films a little, and therefore the filmography of Galina Korotkevich includes only 9 films. She never went to screen tests herself - she was invited as a famous theater artist.

It's now that movie stars are more respected, and most of the inhabitants can be lured to the theater only by the presence on the poster of the famous name from the films. At that time it was the opposite - people still put the theater much higher than the cinema, and therefore the directors were happy to shoot theatrical celebrities in the cinema. That is why in her first film Galina Petrovna performedthe main role - Nadezhda Kovrova in the 1953 film "Spring in Moscow". She has already played her in the performance of the same name on the stage of the Lensoviet Theater. In the same year, Galina Korotkevich performed another role on the screen, which she had previously successfully played in the theater - Sofia Alexandrovna in the film "Shadows" based on the play by S altykov-Shchedrin.

In 1954, she played the first "new" role in the movie. That is, not previously played in the theater. It was the role of an unnamed fellow traveler in the film "We met somewhere." The main role here was Arkady Raikin, who made his debut in this film as a film actor.

Then followed the role of Lidochka in the 1955 film "The Case", again transferred from the stage to the screen, and Maria Burkach in the film "It Started Like This…" in 1956. After that, the actress did not act in film until 1968, devoting herself entirely to the stage.

In 1968, she appeared in a small role in the film "Trembita". In the credits it was recorded with an error - "T. Korotkevich". In 1969, Galina Korotkevich played the role of Zinaida Vasilievna in the film "Unbelievable Yehudiel Khlamida". The next film role, which the actress agreed to, appeared only in 1976 - she played the episodic role of Kartashova in the film "This Does Not Concern Me." The last screen role at the moment is Evdokia Fedorovna, or Baba Dunya, in the series "Trump Worms" of the series "Streets of Broken Lights-8", filmed in 2006.

Voice acting

Not many people know, but in the legendary Soviet film of 1961 "Striped Flight" the role of the main character Marianna was voiced by Galina Korotkevich. It is not known why Margarita Nazarova, who played this role, did not voice herself. But now, in her most famous film, she speaks in the voice of Galina Petrovna. The actress also voiced the heroines of two Czechoslovak films for Soviet distribution - "Game with the Devil" and "Good Soldier Schweik".

Awards

In 1956, Galina Petrovna received the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR, and in 1974 she became a People's Artist. In 2009, the actress was awarded the Prize from the government of St. Petersburg "For outstanding contribution to the development of theater and theatrical art." In 2010, Galina Korotkevich was awarded the Order of Honor.

Private life

In 1957, Galina Korotkevich married actor Iosif Konopatsky, who was four years younger than her. He was also an actor in the Lensoviet theater at that time. This was not the first marriage of Galina Petrovna, but she never talks about her first husband - it is not known who he is, in what year they got married, in which they divorced. The actress said that marriage with Osya Konopatsky - as she herself affectionately called her husband - is a marriage for love, and the first - for youth and stupidity.

In 1958, the couple had a daughter, Irina Konopatskaya. She followed in the footsteps of her parents and also became an actress. From Irina, Galina Petrovna has a granddaughter, Ekaterina. She has already graduated from music school, plays onpiano and dreams of dedicating her life to dancing.

For an unknown reason, the spouses Galina and Joseph divorced, and Korotkevich no longer wanted to tie the knot.

Present

In 2012, actress Galina Korotkevich took part in episode 11 of the documentary "I Remember the Siege", where she spoke about the difficult period of life and work during the siege of Leningrad. Many people from the younger generation became interested in the actress only after watching this film, before that they knew nothing about her.

Galina Petrovna spoke about how important moral support was for the soldiers, and it was the artists of the creative teams who gave it. Being in the second degree of exhaustion, Galina Petrovna danced and sang in the trenches, in the cold, in the pouring rain. As she herself repeated more than once, she managed to survive only thanks to this constant tension. If I could relax even for a second, stop doing my job, I would immediately feel hunger, cold and the breath of death.

Now the actress continues to play in the theater, keeps fit with regular dances and can easily make a wheel on her hands. And this at 97 years old! She goes fishing, works with her granddaughter in acting and says that the main secret of her cheerfulness and youth is kindness, constant creativity and lack of envy.