January 20, 2000
The 100-year-old "queen of romance" has died in Moscow. Isabella Yuryeva. "Madame Anshlag" and "White Gypsy".
Meetings happen only once in a lifetime,
Only once does fate break the thread,
Just once on a cold grey evening
I want to love so much
Born in Rostov-on-Don in 1899, in a family of theater workers: the father sewed hats, the mother was a hairdresser - she made false beards, moustaches and wigs.
Real surname - Leivikova.
Since childhood, she and her three sisters were passionate about music and "sang tirelessly all day long." At 12, she firmly decided to become a singer. A renowned composer at the St. Petersburg Conservatory Alexey Taskin dissuaded her from studying (“this is the voice that nature itself has given her”) and urgently organized a group audition.
I walked out on stage in a black velvet dress. The audience was filled with movie theater directors and stage managers. I sang sternly and delicately. I performed one song, then a second, then a third. I heard them applaud. And they all started vying with each other to invite me: "I'll take her," "No, I'll take her."
She never learned to read music until the end of her life.
In 1922, she made a successful debut at the Coliseum cinema, and was invited to perform at Moscow's Hermitage. It was then that she adopted the stage name "Yuryeva."
February 16th – Cabaret Concert. An evening of exceptional entertainment. Featuring Izabella Yuryeva, a favorite of Moscow and Rostov-on-Don. A buffet with drinks and snacks will be available. To protect the public's health, the administration has fully adjusted the heating.
(poster from 1924)
In 1925 she married a lawyer and theatergoer Joseph Epstein (pseudonym "Arkadyev") - having abandoned his career, he became its accompanist and the author of lyrics for romances. Honeymoon with a tour in Paris It lasted for almost two years—the French literally did not let Yuryeva leave the country.
After the birth of her son, she returned to her homeland with her husband (the boy later died of a heart defect, having lived to be one year old).
In 1928, after major solo concerts, she began to be called the "white gypsy" (for her distinctive performance of gypsy songs). But by the late 1920s, "gypsyism" in the USSR was considered "philistinism" and a "bourgeois atavism."
Isabella refused to chant the party's slogans and retreated into the shadows for almost ten years. She explained her decision this way:
My voice can't handle this tone.
Despite being forgotten, she lived in luxury: she drove with her husband in a gold Chrysler (the only other one like it in all of Moscow belonged to the NKVD People's Commissar Yezhov).
In 1937, she recorded her first song on a record, "You Remember Our Meetings" (her husband had adapted a popular foreign tango into Russian). With her, success returned: three solo concerts at the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic and tours across the country.
Her romances "Dark Eyes," "Sasha," "Leaves Are Falling," "White Night," "In the Old Garden," and "Only Once in a Lifetime Do Meetings Happen" were broadcast from every loudspeaker. Stalin was also a fan of her work: Yuryeva was invited to "night concerts" in the Kremlin (according to one version, she was asked to perform only Soviet songs; according to another, any songs but Soviet ones).
The main question: will you get home from the concert?
During the Great Patriotic War, she performed for soldiers at the front.
For me, the noble romance was closest. Not the rollicking kind. That's what the soldiers liked.
Soon after the end of the war, it again fell into oblivion – in the USSR, the campaign to combat the “bourgeois and ideologically unsuitable genre” continued.
In the early 1950s, she worked as a music teacher at a school in Oryol, occasionally performing at group concerts. She only returned to the big stage in the late 1970s.
I'd break all the mirrors! It's terrible that a woman ages, but her soul remains young.
In 1999, on her centenary, she performed for the last time on the stage of the Moscow Variety Theatre.
I'll sing as best I can, but without backing tracks.
A hundred years is a long time. But honestly, I really want to live longer.
