Boris Sandulenko: biography and personal life

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

In the Soviet stage and the post-Soviet space there was and is only one performer who would be called the domestic Robertino Loretti. This singer became famous already at the age of fourteen, having very touchingly performed the song "Oh, sole mio" in the television program "Blue Light" in 1963, and after less than ten years he became the husband of Ksanka Shchus from "The Elusive Avengers", brilliantly performed by actress Valentina Kurdyukova.

Origin

The biography of singer Boris Sandulenko has its roots in Zhytomyr, a city in the north-west of the Ukrainian SSR, where once after the war his gypsy parents settled for a while.

Like all representatives of their people, the Sandulenko family was free from everything that was the Soviet state of that time: from forced atheism, education and military service, regardless of anyone's will, allowing themselves to do whatever they liked. Boris's father was a virtuoso dancer who could handle any dance from hopak and tap dance to lezginka with a gypsy girl with an exit. mother,as befits a gypsy woman, she was engaged in raising their many children.

Then came the year 1956 and the decree on settling down, which decreed that all Soviet gypsies be involved in labor, and soon they began to be caught right on the streets for vagrancy, speculation and parasitism.

Gypsies quickly began to socialize and take some work positions in nearby collective farms and even enterprises. Becoming a citizen of the Soviet state has become incommensurably more profitable than the arrest and confiscation of the same horses.

Less than ten years later, the gypsies became not so much persecuted as popular in the Soviet Union. Their ensembles, singers, artists and the gypsy theme itself, closer to the 70s, took one of the worthy places in the cultural life of the country.

Sandulenko's family by the end of the 40s migrated to the capital Kyiv, giving this city and the whole country at once two famous pop artists - their eldest son Boris and his younger brother Leonid.

Childhood

Boris Sandulenko, whose biography will be studied in this article, was born on August 17, 1949.

Like so many gypsy children, he was gifted by nature, from childhood he grasped music literally on the fly, by ear. He was no longer born in the same gypsy family, where the boys were brought up in Spartan conditions from ancient times, from childhood they were taught to ride a horse, to wield a whip and a knife. The Sandulenko family, having become settled Kyiv gypsies, greedily tried on the aesthetics, gestures, manners and even traditions of well-bred Kyivans.

Little Boris was pampered, especially without limiting anything. The boy willingly watched what his dancer-father was doing and listened to the musical rhythms.

There was a piano in their house, which his parent often played, so Boris Sandulenko began to try to perform his first songs at the age of five.

Beginning so early, his passion for singing only grew stronger under the influence of his father. On top of that, Boris had natural charisma and a real gypsy temperament. He not only loved to sing, he literally lived the song, putting all his young soul into sometimes even naive verses.

Debut

For the first time, our hero hit the stage when he was only eight years old.

The October Palace of Culture in Kyiv hospitably opened the doors to great art for him. That day the boy sang several songs in Russian, Ukrainian and Italian. During the feast after the concert, he filled his pockets full of sweets and met cosmonaut Pavel Popovich.

At the same time, young Boris Sandulenko attracted the attention of serious teachers who were also present at the concert.

For the first time, the talent of the fourteen-year-old singer was recognized by the audience during his participation in the New Year's "Blue Light" in 1963, when Boris sang the song "Oh sole mio" so touchingly that he began to be called the national Robertino Loretti.

Youth and education

Boris' youth was brilliant. Already at the age of twelve he became a personal guestthe most popular star Robertino Loretti, having visited him in Italy. In his family, he became very respected and, according to the Gypsy tradition, he could already make comments to his younger brothers and sisters. The duties of the teenager Boris Sandulenko also included their upbringing, if free minutes were given out. However, they became more and more rare every day.

Boris was already earning on a par with his father, but still he still couldn’t not only argue with him, but even open his mouth if Sandulenko Sr. spoke.

Unlike his fellow gypsies, who sent their children to school only so that they could only learn to read and write, believing that education after the third grade was a waste of time, Boris's father forced his son to go through all a secondary school course and become one of the most unique in terms of education of Roma children in the city of Kyiv.

After school, Boris Sandulenko studied at the Kyiv State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, returning to the television screen again in a festive television concert in honor of November 7, 1971.

The audience quickly fell in love with him for his special sincere manner of performance, which consists in the light flight of his voice, invisibly changing intonation from a hoarse half-whisper to a fantastic height.

Creative path

After the whole country recognized him, the artist worked for several years in the legendary Moscow VIA "Singing Hearts".

This vocal and instrumental ensemble was created under the oldestMoscow cultural organization "Moskontsert" in 1971, just after the second appearance of Boris Sandulenko on television. The main organizer of the "Singing Hearts" Viktor Vekshtein, as part of his ensemble, managed to work with such subsequently famous musicians as Anatoly Mogilevsky, Yuri Malikov, Nikolai Rappoport and Sergey Berezin.

First, the Singing Hearts played songs by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Tom Jones, as well as many Italian and Spanish songs. In 1973, the ensemble recorded Roman Mayorov's song "The Leaves Will Swirl", and the next day all its members woke up truly famous. Crowds have been standing at the box office for their concerts for many years.

On the photo - Boris Sandulenko, one of the soloists of the VIA "Singing Hearts"

One fine day, the entertainer and director of the group, Yan Romantsev, brought the young artist Sandulenko to the "Singing Hearts". The young man worked in this ensemble for several years, performing mainly gypsy songs and romances.

Brother

In parallel with the history of Boris Sandulenko, the creative career of his younger brother Leonid, who was born on August 19, 1956, also developed.

He completely repeated the path of Boris. He began to sing from an early age, graduated from the conducting and choral department of the Kyiv Musical School named after M. Lysenko, and then the Kyiv State Conservatory, in the evenings he worked as a singer in restaurants.

Leonid became the first gypsy to be awarded the title"People's Artist of Ukraine".

He worked for a long time at the Kiev Music Hall, after which he created his own family ensemble "Gilya romen", with whom he toured in the USA, Canada, France, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany, performing Ukrainian, Russian and gypsy songs, romances, as well as domestic and foreign hits.

Valentina Kurdyukova

In the biography and personal life of Boris Sandulenko, the performer Ksanka Shchus, the heroine of the legendary film epic about the elusive avengers, appeared in 1970.

Valentina was born in Moscow on December 13, 1951. Her father worked as a construction worker and her mother was a cinema ticket salesman. By her fourteen Valya Kurdyukova already had the sports category "Candidate Master of Sports" in rhythmic gymnastics.

For the role of Xanka in the new film "The Elusive Avengers", its director Edmond Keosayan needed an athletic and physically strong girl. Valentina, who in her usual life was a sociable but daring tomboy, met all the requirements.

The first film of the trilogy, "The Adventures of the Elusive", was released in 1966. The film was a wild success with the audience, and the four young actors who played the main roles in it instantly became idols for all the youth of the country.

On the wave of success, it was decided to shoot a sequel. Two years later, in 1968, Newadventures of the elusive , almost repeating the success of the first picture.

However, in the last part of the trilogy, "The Crown of the Russian Empire, or Elusive Again", released on screens in 1971, the audience saw already grown-up heroes, devoid of their former childlike persuasiveness and charm. The film did not receive audience sympathy, and critics generally called this picture one of the worst films released that year.

After the release of the last film of the trilogy, Valentina Kurdyukova left the cinema forever, despite the fact that all her partners continued their acting careers, however, without much success, like her, by and large, they remained actors of the same role.

Ever from the first part of the trilogy, Valentina Kurdyukova secretly fell in love with a young, bright, handsome gypsy Vasily Vasiliev.

However, she was destined to connect her fate with a completely different representative of this people.

Marriage

At the end of filming, Valentina entered the circus school. However, she did not stay in it for a long time, during her very first student tour she met the prominent, gallant and already impossibly famous Boris Sandulenko.

Very soon they got married. Boris continued his singing career, and Valentina Kurdyukova, by that time already in an interesting position, for the sake of her family, finally put an end to cinema, and at the same time at the circus school, along with rhythmic gymnastics.

According to the gypsy tradition, having got a wife, the gypsy son Boris finallygot the right to be called a gypsy. By the standards of his people, he has become an adult.

Children

Gypsies must have at least one son in their family.

In the personal life of Boris Sandulenko, the firstborn appeared in 1973. And soon his younger sister Tatyana was born.

Tatyana Sandulenko followed in her father's footsteps and connected her life with music. She became a teacher of piano, solfeggio and pop vocals. Since 2003, she has taken an active part in various festivals and contests of pop art, became a finalist of the Latvian "Star Factory".

Tatiana conducts master classes in vocal art and is engaged in staging stage performances. She can often be seen as part of the jury at various children's and youth creative competitions and festivals.

Tests

By the end of the 90s, singer Boris Sandulenko should have been a great success. After successful negotiations, a contract was signed with the very idol of his youth, Robertino Loretti. Preparations for a joint tour were already in full swing.

However, all plans were crossed out by an unexpected misfortune: before reaching the age of eighteen, the son of Boris and his wife Valentina died as a result of a serious illness.

From grief, the singer lost his voice for a long time, and he was no longer able to fully restore it.

Then the financial crisis began in Russia. Nobody needed Sandulenko's talent. To survive for their family, Boris's wifeI had to sell newspapers at that harsh time, distribute advertising brochures and even work as a barmaid.

Today

Now the spouses Boris Sandulenko and Valentina Kurdyukova lead a rather secluded life and do not communicate with the press at all.

From time to time, the famous singer in the past performs at the concerts of his daughter Tatyana, but more and more shares with the audience memories of the days of former glory, since his voice has not finally returned to him.

His wife Valentina worked for a long time in the bread department of one of the stores located near their home. Now she is a housewife and lives a normal life as a pensioner.

Be that as it may, after years of glory and ups, followed by bitter trials, today the family of Boris Sandulenko has found agreement with the surrounding reality and lives quite happily…