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| vysotsky, vladimir | |
| 1980 deaths | |
| russian actors | |
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Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky (Влади́мир Семёнович Высо́цкий) ( January 25 1938 – July 25 1980 ) was a Russia n singer, song-writer, poet, and actor, whose career has had an immense and enduring effect on Russian culture. The multifaceted talent of Vladimir Vysotsky is often described by the word Bard that acquired a special meaning in the Soviet Union , although he himself spoke of this term with irony. He thought of himself mainly as an actor and writer, and once remarked, "I do not belong to what people call bards or minstrels or whatever." Though his work was largely ignored and suppressed by the official Soviet cultural establishment, he achieved remarkable fame during his lifetime and to this day exerts significant influence on many of Russia's popular musicians and actors who wish to emulate his iconic status. BIOGRAPHY Vladimir Vysotsky was born in Moscow . His father was an army officer and his mother a German Language translator. His parents divorced shortly after his birth, and he was brought up by his stepmother of Armenia n descent, "aunt" Yevgenia. He spent two years of his childhood living with his father and stepmother at a military base in Eberswalde in Soviet-occupied section of post- WWII Germany (later GDR ). In 1955 , Vladimir enrolled in Moscow Institute Of Civil Engineering but dropped out after just one semester to pursue an acting career. In 1959 he started acting at the Aleksandr Pushkin Theatre where he had mostly small parts. Vysotsky's first wife was Iza Zhukova. He met his second wife, Ludmilla Abramova , in 1961 . They were married in 1965 and had two sons, Arkady and Nikita. In 1964 , on invitation of director Yuri Lyubimov , who was to become his paternal friend, he joined the popular Moscow Theatre Of Drama And Comedy On The Taganka . He made headlines with his leading roles in Shakespeare 's '' Hamlet '' and Brecht 's '' Life Of Galileo ''. Around the same time he also appeared in several films, which featured a few of his songs, e.g., '' Vertikal '' ("The Vertical"), a film about mountain-climbing. Most of Vysotsky's work from that period, however, did not get official recognition and thus no contracts Melodiya , the monopolist of the Soviet recording industry. Nevertheless, his popularity continued to grow, as, with the advent of portable tape-recorders in the USSR, his music became available to the wide masses in the form of home-made reel-to-reel audio tape recordings and later on cassette tapes. He became known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which incorporated social and political commentary into often humorous street vocabulary. His lyrics resonated with millions of Soviet people in every corner of the country; his songs were sung at house parties and amateur concerts. Living in divorce, Vysotsky fell in love with a French actress (of Russian descent) Marina Vlady , who was working at Mosfilm on a joint Soviet-French production at that time. Marina had been married before and had 3 children, while Vladimir had two. Fueled by Marina's exotic status of a Frenchwoman in USSR, and Vladimir's unmatched popularity in his country, their love was passionate and impulsive. They were married in 1969 . For the 10 years the two maintained a partially long-distance relationship, while Marina made compromises with her career in France in order to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir's friends pulled strings in order for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife. Marina eventually joined the Communist Party of France, which essentially gave her an unlimited-entry visa into the USSR, and provided Vladimir with some immunity to prosecution by the government, which was becoming weary of his covertly anti-Soviet lyrics and his odds-defying popularity with the masses. The problems of his long-distance relationship with Vlady inspired several of Vysotsky's songs, including "07" and "She Was In Paris." By the mid-1970s Vysotsky had been suffering from Alcoholism for quite some time and was also struggling with Morphine (and other Opiate ) addiction. Many of his songs from the period deal – either directly or metaphorically – with alcoholism, insanity, mania and obsessions. This was also the height of his popularity, when, as described in Vlady's book about her husband, walking down the street on a summer night, one could hear Vystotsky's recognizable voice coming literally from every open window. Unable to completely ignore his musical phenomenon, Melodiya did release a few of his songs on disks in the late 1970s, which, however, constituted but a small portion of his creative work, which millions already owned on tape and knew by heart. At the same time, Vysotsky gained official recognition as theater and film actor. He starred in a hugely popular TV series '' Mesto Vstrechi Izmenit' Nel'zya '' about two cops fighting crime in late 1940s Stalinist Russia. In spite of his successful acting career, Vysotsky continued to make a living with his concert tours across the country, often on a compulsive binge-like schedule, which, it is believed, contributed to the deterioration of his health. He died in Moscow at the age of 42 of heart failure, which was possibly triggered by a drinking binge or a drug overdose. Vysotsky's body was laid out at the Taganka Theatre, where the funeral service was held. He was later buried at the in 2005. The Soviet authorities, taken aback by the unexpected impact on the masses of the death of an underground singer, and agonized over the country's image during the already highly controversial Olympics, ordered troops into Moscow to prevent possible riots. In the years to come, Vysotsky's flower-adorned grave became a site of pilgrimage for several generations his fans, the youngest of whom were born after his death. His tomb stone too became the subject of controversy, as his widow had wished for a simple abstract slab, while his parents insisted on a realistic gold-gilded statue. Although probably too serious to have inspired Vysotsky himself, the statue is believed by some to be full of metaphors and symbols reminiscent of the singer's life. One of the more obvious symbols is the angel-like wings that wrap the statue's body. The angel wings are supposed to symbolize Vysotsky's importance to all oppressed peoples; they are wrapped around his body to represent the fact that he was never allowed to fully spread his talent and flourish during his lifetime due to the oppressive regime. Shortly after Vysotsky's death, many Russian Bards wrote songs and poems about his life and death. The best known ones are Yuri Vizbor 's "Letter to Vysotsky" (1982) and Bulat Okudzhava 's "About Volodya Vysotsky" (1980). Every year on Vysotsky's birthday, festivals are held throughout Russia and in many communities throughout the world, especially in Europe. Vysotsky's impact in Russia is often compared to that of Bob Dylan in America. Years after her husband's death, urged by her friend Simone Signoret , Marina Vlady wrote a book about her years together with Vysotsky. The book gives tribute to Vladimir's talent and rich persona, yet is uncompromising in its depiction of his addictions and the problems that they caused their marriage. The book was written in French and translated into Russian in tandem by Vlady and a professional translator. It is widely read in Russia and is believed to have shed light onto the life of the man behind the songs that generations of Russians enjoy. The asteroid ). MUSIC The poet accompanied himself on a Russian Guitar , with an intense voice singing ballads of love, peace, war, and every-day Soviet life. He had the ring of honesty and truth, with an ironic and sometimes sarcastic touch that jabbed at the Soviet government, which made him a target for surveillance and threats. In France , he has been compared with French singer Georges Brassens , however in Russia he was usually compared with Joe Dassin , especially since they died in the same year and of the same age. However their similarities are not only superficial. Also, his poetry and performing style greatly influenced Jacek Kaczmarski , a Polish songwriter and singer that touched similar themes. The songs—over 600 of them—were written about almost any imaginable theme. The earliest were Street Songs . These songs were based either on the city romance of Moscow (criminal life, prostitution and extreme drinking) or on life in the Gulag s. Vysotsky slowly grew out of this phase and started singing more serious, though often satirical, songs. Many of these songs were about war. These War Songs were not written to glorify war but to expose the listener to the emotions of those in extreme, life threatening situations. Most Soviet veterans would say that Vysotsky's war songs described the truth of war far more accurately than more official "patriotic" songs, such as Katyusha . Nearly all of Vysotsky's songs are in the first person, but almost never as himself. When singing his criminal songs, he would borrow the voice of a Moscow thief and when singing war songs he would sing from the point of view of a soldier. This created some confusion about Vysotsky's background, especially during the early years when information could not be passed around very easily. Using his acting talent, the poet performed his role play so well that until told otherwise, many of his fans believed that he was indeed a criminal or war veteran. Vysotsky's father said that ''"War participants thought the author of the songs to be one of them, as if he had participated in the war together with them."'' Many of Vysotsky's songs were used as soundtracks for films, especially those he appeared in, a well known example being ''Vertikal''. Not being officially recognized as a poet and singer, Vysotsky performed where and whenever he could - in the theatre, in the university, in village clubs and under open air. It was not unusual for him to have several concerts per day. He used to sleep little, using the night hours to write. In his last years, he managed to perform outside the USSR and held concerts in Paris , Toronto and New York City . With some exceptions, he had no chance to publish his recordings with " Melodiya ", the monopolist of the recording industry in the Soviet Union . His songs were passed on through amateur recordings on magnetic tapes, resulting in an immense popularity; Cosmonaut s took his music on tape cassette into orbit. — His writings were all published posthumously. FILMOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DISCOGRAPHY Lifetime
Post mortem France
Germany
Russia
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