Elena Obraztsova: biography. Opera singer Elena Obraztsova. Personal life, photo

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

Great Russian opera singer, loved not only by our listeners. Her work is well known far beyond the borders of her native country.

Childhood, family

Obraztsova Elena Vasilievna was born in Leningrad on July 7, 1939. Father - Vasily Alekseevich, mother - Natalia Ivanovna. Elena Obraztsova, whose biography is connected with the harsh years of the war, experienced all the horrors of this time. She connects all her childhood memories with the blockade. In the very first days of that terrible war, my father went to fight at the front. Until the end of 1942, little Lena with her mother and grandmother remained in the besieged city. Only in the spring they were evacuated to the Vologda region, to the city of Ustyuzhna, where they lived until the summer of 1945.

After the end of the war, my father returned from the front only a year later. Life was very hard. Mom got a job, and sent Lena to kindergarten. The music director was the first to pay attention to the girl's unusual and strong voice and immediately told her mother about it, but she was so busy with everyday problems that she did not attach any importance to her words.

Lena started singing very early. Already at the age of five, parents, neighborslistened to "concerts" performed by the girl. She had a very thin, mosquito voice. She sang everything she could hear on the radio. Basically, these were Strauss w altzes. When Lena grew up and began to study at school, she always did her homework to the music. During opera broadcasts, she sat for hours at the loudspeaker. Music for the future opera diva was not an addition to life, but its main part.

She always remembered family musical evenings. Elena's father had an unusually beautiful baritone and played the violin well. At work, he often traveled abroad and once brought several records from Italy, on which Lena studied the voices of great singers - Caruso, Gigli, Galli-Curci.

Children's choir

In 1948, my mother enrolled Lena in a children's choir at the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers. This team was led by Maria Zarinskaya, an outstanding teacher and an extraordinary person. She managed to instill in the girl a love of music and gave her a dream of becoming a singer.

In 1954, at the reporting concert of the choir, the first solo performance of the young singer took place.

Taganrog

In 1954 Elena's father was transferred to work in Taganrog. This city gave the aspiring actress a meeting with a great teacher A. T. Kulikova. She taught Lena vocals for two years. She took part in school concerts with pleasure - she sang famous romances and songs popular at that time from the repertoire of the famous Lolita Torres. On the stage of the theater Chekhov arranged reporting concerts. Once, on one of them, the director of the music school from Rostov-on-Don, Mankovskaya, noticed the girl. She isadvised her to continue her education.

In 1957, Elena was admitted to the school immediately for the second year. In August 1958, E. Obraztsova passed an audition and was admitted to the preparatory department of the Leningrad Conservatory. More than a hundred people applied for admission, of which only three applicants were accepted, among whom was Elena Obraztsova.

She got on a course with Professor Antonina Grigorieva, a wise and very patient specialist. As Obraztsova, whose photo you see in this article, recalls, she always wanted to immediately sing big arias, complex and unusually beautiful romances, but Antonina Andreevna convinced that it was impossible to sing without comprehending the basics of vocals.

First awards

Elena Obraztsova, whose biography was already inextricably linked with the theater, in 1962 received two gold medals at once at the youth festival in Helsinki and at the Vocal Competition. Glinka in Moscow. From that moment on, the career of an aspiring artist began to develop rapidly. Opera singer Elena Obraztsova received an invitation to the troupe of the Bolshoi Theater. Her debut on the stage of the legendary theater took place on December 17, 1963 in the opera Boris Godunov. It was at this time that the decision was made to graduate from the conservatory as an external student.

On May 11, 1964, in the Glazunov Hall, Elena Obraztsova passed the final exam, in which S. P. Preobrazhenskaya gave Elena a mark of “five plus”, which no one has received at the Leningrad Conservatory for the past forty years.

Elena Obraztsova: biography,early career

In the same year, the singer went on her first tour to Japan as part of the Bolshoi Theater troupe, and in the autumn to Italy. She performed on the famous stage of the La Scala Theatre. Her parties were small - Princess Marya ("War and Peace") and the governess in "The Queen of Spades". In the very first year of her work at the theater, Elena Vasilievna Obraztsova performed eight (!) Parts, thereby making the whole musical Moscow talk about herself. In a very short time, the name of the rising star shone in the world opera sky. Tours in Paris in 1969 became especially significant for the young opera singer. The resounding success in the part of Marina Mnishek changed her creative destiny dramatically.

In 1970 she won gold medals at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and in Barcelona at the Tchaikovsky Competition. F. Vinyasa. In 1971, in Paris, in the Pleyel concert hall, opera lovers were presented with her first solo concert, which French journalists called "historic". Following Paris, the largest cities and capitals of the world recognized that Elena Obraztsova is a singer who is one of the most brilliant opera stars in the world. Her performances on famous stages entered the history of opera. She managed to raise the Russian vocal school to an unprecedented height.

Concert activity

Elena Vasilievna tours with concerts around the world and, of course, in Russia. The repertoire of her concerts consists of the music of one hundred Russian and foreign composers. In her performance, the oldromances and Russian songs. In recent years, admirers of the singer's talent got acquainted with her programs - "Songs of my youth", "Baroque music", "Songs of war". In the period from 2009 to 2013, Obraztsova performed solo in eighty concerts in our country and abroad.

Elena Vasilievna - director

In 1986, Obraztsova surprised the admirers of her talent by appearing before them in a new capacity. On the stage of her native theater, she staged the opera "Werther" by J. Masnet.

Obraztsova - teacher

From 1973 to 1994, the famous singer taught at the Conservatory. Tchaikovsky in Moscow. Since 1992 he has been teaching at the Musashino Academy in Tokyo, giving unique master classes in Russia, Europe and Japan. Quite often today, the famous singer is invited to the jury of international vocal competitions - Tchaikovsky in Moscow (1994), vocalists in Marseille (1997), Rimsky-Korsakov in St. Petersburg (1998). In 1996, Elena Obraztsova, a world-famous singer, created the Cultural Center in St. Petersburg.

Charity foundation

In 2011, our beloved singer established the Elena Obraztsova Foundation, a charitable organization whose main goal is educational projects, the creation of the International Academy of Music, the search and training of talented youth, and assistance to stage veterans. The Foundation has already held several charity concerts dedicated to veterans of the scene.

Music films

Many directors were happy to make musical films with the participation of the great singer. That's mineCarmen" (1977), "Happy Commonwe alth" (1980), "The Merry Widow" (1984), "Higher Than Love" (1991) and others. Her partners were Fedor Barbieri, Placido Domingo, Renato Bruzon.

Sound recording

Elena Vasilievna has recorded more than fifty discs at the largest studios. In recent years, recordings have appeared from concerts and performances of the singer in honor of the bicentenary of the La Scala Theater. For them, Obraztsova was awarded the Golden Verdi prize.

Artistic Director

In 2008, Obraztsova headed the Opera Group of the Opera and Ballet Theatre. Mussorgsky. Two premieres were presented - the operas Rural Honor and Love Potion.

Natural talent or hard work?

Undoubtedly, nature generously endowed the singer: her voice has a timbre of extraordinary beauty, a bright, memorable appearance, a rare gift of a dramatic actress. All these data are combined in an amazing way in the artist, selflessly devoted to music and art. For Elena Vasilievna, singing is not just a profession, but the highest meaning of her whole life.

Elena Obraztsova: personal life

B. P. Makarov is a well-known theoretical physicist in scientific circles. Little is known about him. A scientist of this level serves science, not people. This is the first husband of Exemplary. Their marriage lasted 17 years. All this time, the husband looked after the house, took care of his daughter Lena, who was born in this marriage, and waited for his wife after a long tour. Elena Vasilievna remembers him with respect and warmth, but does not regret that she fell in love with another person. During the divorceshe lost her voice and couldn't sing at all.

Obraztsova met her second husband on stage. This is the famous Lithuanian and Russian conductor Algis Marcelovich Zhuraitis. He never complained about his he alth. A terrible, insidious disease burned him unexpectedly and cruelly. At first, Elena Yakovlevna did not understand well what had happened. She rushed around the countries and cities, carefully avoiding the house, where everything reminded her of her beloved. Elena Obraztsova, whose biography has so far developed happily, suffered a severe blow. She drove dark thoughts from herself, but she did not have enough strength to continue to live. In addition, at this difficult time, daughter Elena and her family went to Spain to study vocals, and took her grandson with her. The desperate woman grew fat, her voice lost its unique beauty. Elena Vasilievna fell into a deep depression, and her friends helped her get out of it.

Today the family of Elena Obraztsova is daughter Elena (also an opera singer), grandson Alexander and granddaughter Anastasia.

She won't be old

Once in Hungary, Elena Vasilievna saw a woman of amazing beauty, whose age was given out only by her old, old hands. Then she told herself that when this terrible age comes, she will definitely turn to plastic surgeons - no one will ever see her old. Obraztsova does not hide the fact that she has already performed several operations. She thinks it's essential for female artists to take the stage.