Prokofiev family. Non-Silk Road

Sergei Prokofiev is an outstanding Russian composer and a person of unique destiny. A man who has amazing abilities and entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory when he was only 13. A man who went abroad after the revolution, but returned to the USSR - with honor and without the stigma of a “defector”. A person with unshakable determination, who was not broken by life's difficulties. He was favored by the authorities, received the highest state awards, and then, during his lifetime, fell into oblivion and disgrace. A man who is called the “sole genius” of the twentieth century and whose amazing works delight listeners around the world.

Read a short biography of Sergei Prokofiev and many interesting facts about the composer on our page.

Brief biography of Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev comes from the Ukrainian village of Sontsovka. There are different versions of the date of his birth, but it is advisable to indicate the one that he himself indicated in his “Autobiography” - April 11 (23), 1891. It seems that he was already born a composer, because thanks to his mother, Maria Grigorievna, who played the piano excellently, the Prokofievs’ house was full of music. Interest in the instrument prompted little Seryozha to start learning to play. Since 1902, Sergei Prokofiev began teaching music R.M. Gliere.

Prokofiev became a student at the Moscow Conservatory in 1904. Five years later he graduated from the composition department, and after another five from the piano department, becoming the best graduate. He began giving concerts in 1908. The debut was extremely favorably assessed by critics, and both his performing talent and composer's originality were noted. Since 1911, sheet music of his works has been published. The turning point in the fate of young Prokofiev was his acquaintance with S.P. Diaghilev in 1914. Thanks to the union of the entrepreneur and the composer, four ballets were born. In 1915, Diaghilev organized Prokofiev's first foreign performance with a program consisting of his compositions.

Prokofiev perceived the revolution as destruction, “massacre and game.” Therefore, the next year I went to Tokyo, and from there to New York. He lived in France for a long time, touring the old and new worlds as a pianist. In 1923, he married the Spanish singer Lina Codina, and they had two sons. Arriving for performances in the Soviet Union, Prokofiev sees an exceptionally cordial, even luxurious, reception from the authorities, a grandiose success with the public that he had never seen abroad, and also receives an offer to return and the promise of the status of “first composer.” And in 1936, Prokofiev moved to Moscow with his family and property. The authorities did not deceive him - a luxurious apartment, well-trained servants, orders pouring in as if from a cornucopia. In 1941, Prokofiev left his family for Mira Mendelsohn.

The year 1948 began with unexpected dramatic events. Prokofiev’s name was mentioned in the party resolution “On the opera “The Great Friendship” by V. Muradeli.” The composer was classified as a “formalist”. As a result, some of his works, in particular the Sixth Symphony, were banned, while others were almost never performed. However, already in 1949 these restrictions were lifted by Stalin’s personal order. It turned out that even the “first composer” of the country does not belong to the untouchable caste. Less than ten days after the publication of the devastating decree, the composer’s first wife, Lina Ivanovna, was arrested. She was sentenced to 20 years in the camps for espionage and treason; she would be released only in 1956. Prokofiev’s health noticeably deteriorated, doctors advised him to hardly work. Nevertheless, in 1952, he personally attended the first performance of his Seventh Symphony, and wrote music even on the last day of his life. On the evening of March 5, 1953, Sergei Prokofiev's heart stopped...

Prokofiev - composer

From Prokofiev's biography we know that at the age of five Seryozha came up with and played his first piece on the piano (the notes were recorded by Maria Grigorievna). Having visited Moscow productions in 1900 " Faust" And " Sleeping beauty“, the child was so inspired by what he heard that just six months later his first opera, “The Giant,” was born. By the time I entered the conservatory, I had accumulated several folders of essays.

The idea of ​​his first big opera based on the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky " Player", which in his youth Prokofiev decided to transfer to the opera stage, was discussed by the composer primarily with S. Diaghilev. Who, however, was not interested in the idea. Unlike the chief conductor of the Mariinsky Theater A. Coates, who supported her. The opera was completed in 1916, the roles were assigned, rehearsals began, but due to an unfortunate series of obstacles, the premiere never took place. After some time, Prokofiev made a second edition of the opera, but the Bolshoi Theater staged it only in 1974. During the composer's lifetime, only the second edition was staged by the Brussels La Monnaie Theater in 1929, where the opera was performed in French. The last work written and performed in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg was the First Symphony. During the period of living abroad the following were created: operas " Love for Three Oranges" and "Fire Angel", three symphonies, many sonatas and plays, music for the film "Lieutenant Kizhe", concerts for cellos, piano, violins with an orchestra.

The return to the USSR is the time of Prokofiev’s rapid creative rise, when works are born that have become his “calling card” even for those who are little familiar with classical music - ballet "Romeo and Juliet" and the symphonic fairy tale “Peter and the Wolf”. In 1940, the Opera House named after. K.S. Stanislavsky gives the premiere of Semyon Kotko. At the same time, work on the opera “Betrothal in a Monastery” was completed, where M. Mendelssohn co-authored the libretto.

In 1938, S. Eisenstein’s film “Alexander Nevsky” was released, which a few years later was destined to become a symbol of the fight against the Nazi invaders. The music of this film, like the director’s second monumental film “Ivan the Terrible,” was written by Sergei Prokofiev. The war years were marked by evacuation to the Caucasus, as well as work on three major works: the Fifth Symphony, ballet "Cinderella", opera " War and Peace" The author of the libretto for this opera and subsequent works by the composer was his second wife. The post-war period is notable primarily for two symphonies - the Sixth, which is considered a kind of requiem for the victims of the war, and the Seventh, dedicated to youth and hopes.

Interesting Facts:

• The version of the opera The Gambler, written for the Mariinsky Theater in 1916, was never staged on its stage. The premiere of the second edition took place only in 1991.
• During Prokofiev's lifetime, only 4 of his operas were staged in the USSR. At the same time, not a single one at the Bolshoi Theater.
• Sergei Prokofiev left two legal widows. A month before the arrest of L. Prokofieva, who did not give him a divorce either for reasons of her own safety, or because she sincerely did not want to let her loved one go, the composer remarried. He was advised to take advantage of the legal provisions of the decree prohibiting marriages with foreigners, which recognized the church marriage with Lina Ivanovna, concluded in Germany, as invalid. Prokofiev hastened to legitimize relations with M. Mendelssohn, thereby exposing his ex-wife to the blows of the Soviet repressive machine. After all, with the stroke of a pen and against her will, she turned from Prokofiev’s wife into a lonely foreigner maintaining relationships with other foreigners in Moscow. Upon returning from the camp, the composer's first wife restored all her marital rights through the courts, including a significant part of the inheritance.
• The composer was a brilliant chess player . “Chess is the music of thought” is one of his most famous aphorisms. Once he even managed to win a game against the world chess champion H.-R. Capablanca.

• From 1916 to 1921, Prokofiev collected an album of autographs from his friends who answered the question: “What do you think about the sun?” Among those who responded were K. Petrov-Vodkin, A. Dostoevskaya, F. Chaliapin, A. Rubinstein, V. Burliuk, V. Mayakovsky, K. Balmont. Prokofiev's work is often called sunny, optimistic, and cheerful. Even the place of his birth in some sources is called Solntsevka.
• Prokofiev’s biography notes that in the first years of the composer’s performances in the United States, he was called a “musical Bolshevik” there. The American public turned out to be too conservative to understand his music. In addition, she already had her own Russian idol - Sergei Rachmaninov.
• Upon his return to the USSR, Prokofiev was given a spacious apartment in a house on Zemlyanoy Val, 14, where, in particular, lived: pilot V. Chkalov, poet S. Marshak, actor B. Chirkov, artist K. Yuon. They also allowed us to bring with us a blue Ford purchased abroad, and even get a personal driver.
• Contemporaries noted Sergei Sergeevich’s ability to dress with taste. He was not embarrassed by either bright colors or bold combinations of clothes. He loved French perfumes and expensive accessories such as ties, good wines and gourmet dishes.
• Sergei Prokofiev kept a detailed personal diary for 26 years. But after moving to the Soviet Union, I decided that it would be wiser not to do this anymore.

• After the war, Prokofiev mainly lived in a dacha in the village of Nikolina Gora near Moscow, which he bought with money from the fifth Stalin Prize. In Moscow, his home was three rooms in a communal apartment, where, in addition to the composer and his wife, Mira Abramovna’s stepfather also lived.
• The composer often included fragments and melodies of earlier works in his works. Examples include:
  - the music of the ballet “Ala and Lolliy”, which S. Diaghilev refused to stage, was reworked by Prokofiev into the Scythian Suite;
  - the music of the Third Symphony is taken from the opera “The Fiery Angel”;
  - The Fourth Symphony was born from the music of the ballet “Prodigal Son”;
  - the theme “Tatar Steppe” from the film “Ivan the Terrible” formed the basis of Kutuzov’s aria in the opera “War and Peace”.
• “Steel Leap” first saw the Russian stage only in 2015, 90 years after its creation.
• The composer finished work on the duet of Katerina and Danila from the ballet “The Tale of the Stone Flower” a few hours before his death.
• Life of S.S. Prokofiev and I.V. Stalin's death ended on the same day, which is why the composer's death was announced on the radio with a delay, and the organization of the funeral was significantly complicated.

Sergei Prokofiev and cinema

The creation of music for films by a composer of this level has no precedent in art. In 1930–40, Sergei Prokofiev wrote music for eight films. One of them, “The Queen of Spades” (1936), was never released due to the fire at Mosfilm, which destroyed the films. Prokofiev's music for his first film, Lieutenant Kizhe, became incredibly popular. Based on it, the composer created a symphonic suite, which was performed by orchestras around the world. Two ballets were subsequently created to this music. However, Prokofiev did not immediately accept the proposal of the filmmakers - his first reaction was refusal. But after reading the script and a detailed discussion of the director’s plan, he became interested in the idea and, as he noted in his Autobiography, he worked quickly and with pleasure on the music for “Lieutenant Kizha.” The creation of the suite required more time, re-orchestration and even reworking of some themes.

Unlike “Lieutenant Kizhe”, the proposal to write music for the film “ Alexander Nevskiy“Prokofiev accepted without hesitation. They had known Sergei Eisenstein for a long time; Prokofiev even considered himself a fan of the director. The work on the film became a triumph of true co-creation: sometimes the composer wrote a musical text, and the director based the filming and editing of the episode on its basis, sometimes Prokofiev looked at the finished material, tapping the rhythms with his fingers on the wood and after a while bringing back the finished score. The music of “Alexander Nevsky” embodied all the main features of Prokofiev’s talent and deservedly entered the golden fund of world culture. During the war, Prokofiev created music for three patriotic films: “Partisans in the steppes of Ukraine”, “Kotovsky”, “Tonya” (from the film collection “Our Girls”), as well as for the biographical film “Lermontov” (together with V. Pushkov).

Last in time, but not least in importance, was Prokofiev’s work on S. Eisenstein’s film “Ivan the Terrible,” which began in Alma-Ata. The music of “Ivan the Terrible” continues the themes of “Alexander Nevsky” with its folk-epic power. But the second joint film of the two geniuses consists not only of heroic scenes, but also tells the story of a boyar conspiracy and diplomatic intrigue, which required a more diverse musical canvas. This work of the composer was awarded the Stalin Prize. After Prokofiev’s death, the music of “Ivan the Terrible” served as the basis for the creation of an oratorio and ballet.

Despite the fact that the amazing fate of Sergei Prokofiev could form the basis of an interesting film script, there are still no feature films about the composer’s life. For various anniversaries - from the day of birth or death - only television films and programs were created. Perhaps this is due to the fact that no one undertakes to unambiguously interpret the ambiguous actions of Sergei Sergeevich. For what reasons did he return to the USSR? Was the Soviet period of his work conformism or innovation? Why did his first marriage break up? Why did he allow Lina Ivanovna to rashly refuse to evacuate from wartime Moscow and not at least take the children out? And did he even care about anything other than his own vanity and creative fulfillment - the fate of his arrested first wife and his own sons, for example? There are no answers to these and many other pressing questions. There are opinions and speculations that may be unfair to the great composer.

Sergei Prokofiev in the lives of outstanding musicians

• Sergey Taneyev said about nine-year-old Seryozha Prokofiev that he has outstanding abilities and absolute pitch.
• During the recording of the music for the film “Lieutenant Kizhe,” the symphony orchestra was led by the young conductor Isaac Dunaevsky. Subsequently, in personal correspondence, Dunaevsky expressed an ambiguous attitude towards Prokofiev due to the latter’s privileged position.
• The biography of Prokofiev indicates that the composer Boris Asafiev was a classmate at the Conservatory and a long-time friend of Prokofiev. Despite this, at the First Congress of Soviet Composers in 1948, a speech was read on his behalf, in which the work of the “formalist” Prokofiev was equated with fascism. In addition, Asafiev, on behalf of Zhdanov, edited the resolution “On the opera “Great Friendship” by V. Muradeli,” in which, by the way, he was appointed chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Union of Composers.
• The ballet “On the Dnieper” became the debut production for two choreographers of different generations - Serge Lifar as choreographer of the Paris Opera in 1930, and Alexei Ratmansky at the American Ballet Theater (2009).
• Mstislav Rostropovich was very friendly with Sergei Prokofiev, for whom the composer created the Symphony-Concerto for cello and orchestra.
• The role of Polina in the Bolshoi Theater's premiere production of the opera The Gambler (1974) was Galina Vishnevskaya's last role before emigrating.
• Galina Ulanova, the first performer of the role of Juliet, recalled that she was one of those who believed that “there is no sadder story in the world than Prokofiev’s music in ballet.” The composer's melody, its sharply changing tempos and moods created problems in understanding the concept and performing the role. Years later, Galina Sergeevna will say that if she were asked what the music of “Romeo and Juliet” should be, she would answer - only the one that Prokofiev wrote.

• S.S. Prokofiev is Valery Gergiev's favorite composer. His career as a conductor at the Kirov (Mariinsky) Theater began with the opera “War and Peace”. Perhaps for this reason, the Mariinsky Theater is the only one in the world whose repertoire includes 12 productions of Prokofiev’s works. For the composer’s 125th birthday in April 2016, the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra played all 7 of his symphonies over three anniversary days. It was Valery Gergiev who saved the composer’s dacha from destruction by purchasing it and donating it to his charitable foundation, which plans to create a cultural center there.

As often happens with geniuses, interest in the music of Sergei Prokofiev increases the more time passes from the day it was written. Having outstripped not only her generation of listeners, she, even in the 21st century of dissonance, is not a frozen classic, but a living source of energy and the power of true creativity.

Video: watch a film about S. Prokofiev

Serey Sergeevich Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin: March 5, 1953. The death of the “leader of the peoples” overshadowed the departure of the musician. Everyone who wanted to say goodbye to him went to the House of Composers, where a civil funeral service was held, with indoor flowers in pots: there were simply no others - they all “got” to Stalin.

At the same time, another widow of Prokofiev, prisoner Lina Lyubera, was habitually pushing a barrel of slop in a women’s camp in the village of Abez. And she knew nothing that the man she loved more than anyone in the world had died...

Forgotten name

For a long time, this name - Caroline Codina-Lubera - was not in any biography of Prokofiev. Of course, it wouldn’t behoove one of the most famous Soviet composers, a six-time winner of the Stalin Prize, to have a foreign wife. Meanwhile, it was with this fragile Spanish woman, in whom there was a lot of “enemy” blood - Polish, French and Catalan - that Sergei Prokofiev lived for 20 long happy years. But she was mercilessly erased, first from the composer’s life, and then even from the memories of him. They left room only for the “exemplary” Mira Mendelson: a graduate of the literary institute, a Komsomol member, the daughter of an “old Bolshevik”

Highlight of the season

Carolina grew up in a musical family: her father, the Spaniard Juan Codina, and her mother, the Polish Olga Nemysskaya, were singers. And therefore they followed the musical events of New York, where they moved from Spain. And in 1918, the highlight of the Big Apple’s musical program was Prokofiev. He performed at the famous Carnegie Hall. The manner of his performance and her own original compositions delighted Olga Nemysskaya, and she literally forced her daughter, an aspiring singer, to meet Prokofiev after the concert. Lina didn’t really want to go backstage: yes, she liked his music, but the lanky 27-year-old Russian himself didn’t interest her too much.

Lina was barely 21 years old, but she knew her worth very well: she, like two peas in a pod like the silent film star Teresa Brooks, was looked after by men passing by for a long time. She knew five languages, sang beautifully... It’s clear why she didn’t want to come to Prokofiev as one of his enthusiastic fans. But she had to capitulate under maternal pressure. Lina wanted to remain unnoticed in the crowd of other young ladies and froze on the threshold. However, Prokofiev immediately singled out the dark-haired girl and invited her to enter. Since this all started. As he later wrote in his diary, Lina “struck me with the liveliness and sparkle of her black eyes and some kind of youthful trepidation. In short, she represented the type of Mediterranean beauty that has always attracted me."

Bird

Very soon they no longer spent a day without each other. Especially for his Birdie - as Prokofiev nicknamed Lina - he wrote a cycle of five songs. Then there were other works. And they gave concerts together - the Russian pianist and composer Prokofiev and the Spanish mezzo-soprano Lubera (she took the surname of her maternal grandmother as a creative pseudonym): France, USA, USSR, Germany... Between the tour, Carolina effortlessly learned Russian. And also between the tours they managed to get married - on September 20, 1923 in the Bavarian town of Ettal. In February 1924, little Svyatoslav appeared in their family. And 4 years later - the second son - Oleg.

The men's gaze continued to follow the fragile Birdie. Over the years, she only became prettier and acquired a luster. As a model of elegance, she was held in the musical circles of Paris and London, New York and Milan. Balmont dedicated poems to her, Picasso, Diaghilev and Matisse highly valued her style, Stravinsky and Rachmaninov, despite their musical rivalry with Prokofiev, paid tribute to her voice and, most importantly, her talent to combine three positions at once: singer, socialite and composer's wife. As the latter, she not only took care of Prokofiev’s life, but also organized tours and the frequent travel associated with them, negotiated, translated... She managed everything effortlessly, elegantly and beautifully. According to the memoirs of Prokofiev’s sons, “mother’s word was decisive.” When the composer decided to return to the USSR after a tour that had lasted for 18 years, it was Ptashka who put an end to all these doubts and hesitations. At home, Prokofiev was promised the opportunity to write music. In the West, he, like Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, was forced to put aside composing for the sake of performing: this was the only way he could earn money. Lina, who adored her husband, understood perfectly well: creativity came first for him. So, we need to move.

Beginning of the End

In 1936, the Prokofiev family returned to the USSR. The children went to an Anglo-American school. Lina shone at receptions at numerous embassies - she was always the center of attention. But Prokofiev was really allowed to create. True, not for long: very soon they explained to him what the task of a Soviet composer was. And now, almost in parallel with “Romeo and Juliet”, he writes “Lenin’s Cantata”, composes an opera about a Ukrainian collective farm - “Semyon Kotko”... And he sees how his circle of friends is thinning out - this one was arrested, this one went missing, this one was shot, declared a spy, etc., etc. Lina sees all this too. But she doesn’t even think about changing: why should she stop communicating with her foreign friends, visiting embassies, writing to her mother in France? What kind of nonsense is this?

The right wife

In 1938, Prokofiev went to Kislovodsk to rest. And almost in the first letter he reported: “Here a charming Jewish woman is following me, but don’t think anything bad...” Lina didn’t even think. But in vain. Prokofiev could not resist. The holiday romance turned into a permanent romance. And in 1941, the composer left the family. Perhaps, if Ptashka had shed at least one tear, he would have stopped... But she “kept her mark.” She didn't like to complain. And I couldn't stand whiners. Looking at Lina, no one could even imagine what demons were tearing her soul apart. Because she didn’t come to terms with Prokofiev’s departure for a second, and didn’t stop loving him for a second. She loved the composer and Mira - the right girl from the right family.

The publishing house "Classics-XXI" publishes a book by the famous musicologist Valentina Chemberdzhi "The 20th Century of Lina Prokofieva". “Resembling one of his three oranges,” radiating positive energy, extravagant, gushing with wit - this is the “established” image of Sergei Prokofiev, a brilliant composer, pianist, conductor, writer, chess player... Of course, there had to be a woman next to him equally high flying.

And she was. Only we knew almost nothing about her for many years.

Lina Kodina - the first wife of Sergei Prokofiev, with whom he lived for twenty happy years, was Spanish by birth, a beauty and an aristocrat, was a singer, actress, shone in the world, and spoke many languages ​​fluently. The appearance of the “politically correct” Mira Mendelson erased Lina from the life of a genius, and her image turned out to be thoroughly edited by Soviet censorship.

From the book by Valentina Chemberdzhi, with whom Lina Ivanovna had a close friendship, we learn about this amazing woman and her tragic fate: the collapse of her family, war, arrest in 1948 on charges of espionage, Stalin’s camps, return to the West.

Lina lived for ninety years, an entire era passed before her eyes.

The spouses' social circle included Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Horowitz and Toscanini, Diaghilev and Balmont, Picasso and Matisse, Meyerhold and Eisenstein... All this is described in the book "The 20th Century of Lina Prokofieva." It is based on unique materials from family archives, Sergei Prokofiev's Diary, previously unpublished notes and letters from Lina Ivanovna herself, and conversations between the author and her two grandchildren and son Svyatoslav. We bring to your attention one chapter from the book “The 20th Century by Lina Prokofieva”.

In 1948, in less than two months, the family of Sergei and Lina Prokofiev was beset by three events one after another that radically changed their lives.

On January 15, 1948, the marriage of Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev with Mira Alexandrovna Mendelsohn was officially formalized.

On February 10, 1948, a resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks was issued, branding Prokofiev and Shostakovich as formalists, enemies of the people, causing harm with their music. Other “domestic” composers were also mentioned in this resolution, but the goal was to teach and destroy precisely these world-famous luminaries of Russian music.

On February 20, 1948, Lina Ivanovna Prokofieva was arrested on charges of espionage and sentenced to twenty years in maximum security camps.

Three disasters happened too quickly, one after another, not to think about the coincidence. From Svyatoslav Prokofiev we read:

“I am still painfully trying to understand the connection between these events: the Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the marriage to M.A. Mendelson and the arrest of my mother,” these thoughts have not left Svyatoslav Sergeevich for many years.

Divorce and marriage in Soviet style

"The divorce from L.I. was finalized. We went to the registry office in Petrovka, received a marriage certificate. There were so many complex, difficult things associated with this. Unfortunately, Seryozha is not feeling very well, he needs to lie down - he was drawing the curtains at the dacha, a stick she snapped and hit him on the head."

The first sentence of this entry is not true. The divorce was not finalized. Close people knew that on January 15, 1948, a gross violation of the law, rare even for Soviet justice, had occurred.

It became possible to talk about this openly only a few years after Stalin’s death. And then only the legally incredible circumstances of obtaining a marriage certificate were revealed, which Mira Mendelson talks about as something self-evident.

The fact of the matter is that Prokofiev and Lina Ivanovna did not divorce, and she remained his legal wife. Placed in a false position by the bodies of our flexible Soviet justice, Sergei Sergeevich married for the second time while he was married.

Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev and Carolina Codina got married in the south of Germany, in Bavaria, in the city of Ettal on October 8, 1923, as stated in the corresponding document given in the fourth chapter of this book.

The ninth chapter, “Resort Romance,” described the history of Sergei Prokofiev’s relationship with Mira Mendelsohn; it began in 1938 and ended with the collapse of the composer’s family, who left his first wife and children before the war, at the beginning of 1941.

For many years, Sergei Sergeevich was unable to take the final step and officially connect his life with Mira Alexandrovna. Finally, having overcome difficult doubts and sorrowful experiences, he decided to dissolve his marriage with Lina Ivanovna and marry M.A. Mendelsohn.

Accustomed for the first forty-five years of his life to the laws of a legal society, he, of course, did not even think about marrying contrary to the laws.

Prokofiev wanted to do everything as expected: first divorce Lina Ivanovna and then enter into an official marriage with Mira Alexandrovna. He began to apply for divorce to the courts.

A surprise, which he apparently did not want at all, was waiting for him at that very moment.

“When my father decided to formalize his new marriage,” says Svyatoslav Prokofiev, “in court, to his great surprise, he was told that there was no need for a divorce at all: the marriage, concluded in October 1923 in Ettal (Germany), was now considered invalid, so how he was not registered at the Soviet consulate. Mother, who entered the USSR as Prokofiev’s wife, at some mysterious moment suddenly ceased to be her. Father, being confident in the legality of his marriage with his mother, appealed to a higher court, but they told him "The same thing. So he was able to marry his new wife without a divorce."

Such a violation of the law could only occur on the direct orders of the NKVD or higher party bodies.

The driver of Prokofiev, or rather, the father of Mira Alexandrovna, Tabernakulov said that in 1948, completely unexpectedly and for the only time in his life, he took Sergei Sergeevich to the NKVD to the Lubyanka. This trip remains mysterious, but most likely it is connected either with the arrest of Lina Ivanovna, or with the encouragement of marriage with Mira Alexandrovna.

“Either he went himself, or he was called. They probably called him, Zhdanov’s times were coming, they only played on the radio “Get up, Russian people,” says Svyatoslav Sergeevich. “Maybe they warned about mom. What could dad do? They almost stopped performing."

Since the marriage of Sergei Prokofiev with Mira Mendelson, the term “Prokofiev’s case” even appeared in legal practice. In fact, in the presence of a legal wife, who legally entered the country with her husband and children and settled there, who had lived in the USSR for twelve years by the time of her marriage to Mendelssohn, Prokofiev was not even simply allowed, but perhaps pushed him without delay. marry Mira Alexandrovna Mendelson.

She keeps a diary day after day, recording all the details of her life, but never mentions the arrest of Lina Ivanovna that followed a month later. Talking about the life of Sergei Sergeevich and her own, occasionally touching with hostility on Lina Ivanovna’s influence on the children, Mira Alexandrovna does not seem to know that Lina Ivanovna is in prison, that she was sentenced to twenty years in maximum security camps on the absurd charge of espionage. This is not even an event behind the scenes, it is on stage. The strong yeast of a true Soviet man shows: not knowing what is not supposed to happen.

In the preface to “Memoirs of Sergei Prokofiev” M.A. Mendelson M. Rakhmanova, in particular, writes: “The text does not mention in a single word the arrest of Lina Ivanovna in 1948 and Prokofiev’s reaction to this event.< ... >From a purely human point of view, the claims expressed by the memoirist regarding certain actions of Lina Ivanovna and the sons of Sergei Sergeevich are very unpleasant.< ... >Considering that the memoirist was only a dozen years older than the sons of Sergei Sergeevich, then it would seem that she could understand them better. It seems that this again reflected Mira Alexandrovna’s deeply “Soviet” upbringing, on the one hand, and, on the other, conscious or unconscious, necessary or unnecessary attempts at self-justification.”

In the entry dated January 15, 1948, given at the beginning of this chapter, Mira Alexandrovna talks about the “complex and difficult” that preceded the formalization of her official status as a wife. She apparently had in mind not only the usual ups and downs that accompany her husband’s departure from his children and family, but also some antipathy (maybe jealousy?) towards the sons of Sergei Sergeevich and Lina Ivanovna, and the very fact of their existence, and her claims against them . This motif sounds on the pages of Mendelssohn’s diary and appears again and again on various occasions. Mira Alexandrovna, it seems, even though she tried in her own way, she could not overcome herself and hide her irritation - in her diary entries she talks in detail about this side of her new family life.

No, no, yes, the “unpleasant” Lina Ivanovna, then still free, and her sons under her influence will flash on the pages. Mira Alexandrovna doesn’t like the way she raised her children. There are very strange attempts to deny the reverent love that the sons had for their father from childhood.

“Oleg arrived in the morning. Now he sometimes comes to the dacha, especially when he needs to ask Seryozha for something.< ... >I tried to prepare a tastier lunch - pancakes with appetizers, melon, coffee, and in the evening for dinner, cabbage pie to pamper Oleg.< ... >

Before leaving, I gave Oleg the trousers that I had bought for him as a gift at a limited-edition store. They turned out to fit perfectly, and Seryozha advised me to leave them “for going out” and wear others to class. Now Seryozha and Oleg are having rather difficult conversations about the divorce from L.I. Seryozha decided that this issue could not be postponed, but all negotiations on this topic with L.I. unsuccessful. Last time, during our stay in Moscow, Oleg came to us, and Seryozha again spoke to him about the need for a divorce, insisting that Oleg hand over L.I. a letter about this, since it is inevitable anyway. Oleg lost his nerve. He stated that he would not hand over the letter (although we are sure that she already has this letter, but it is pretended that she knows nothing about it). Oleg boiled and said: “Mom’s answer is clear anyway.” Seryozha has to negotiate through Oleg, since with L.I. he has not been dating for several years, has absolutely no relationship, and has not been to Chkalovskaya. During this time, she molded the children into whatever she wanted, and one feels that, despite their advanced age, they act under her dictation, becoming sweet when something is needed, and having a rather tough appearance and not at all an affectionate tone if Seryozha will not say what they like. For now this concerns Oleg. Svyatoslav does not visit us. For some reason, it seems to me that they have developed a vain attitude towards Seryozha’s name with a complete misunderstanding of him as a person. What they had been soaked with for several years had taken root. And how I would like them to become real people, so that they would truly, unselfishly become attached to Seryozha. However, I still don’t know them enough to draw conclusions; I still don’t fully imagine their life goals and interests.”

Mira Alexandrovna returns to the “complex and difficult” again and again in her memoirs. She complains about one or the other son.

In a personal letter dated December 23, 2004, Svyatoslav Sergeevich, after the publication of Mira Alexandrovna’s diary entries, writes to me:

“M.A. is trying with all her might to slander mom, Oleg and me (and show how loving, caring and objective she is) in the eyes of S.S. and thereby prove, they say, what bad people we all are, taking revenge for our natural dislike "To her. She denigrates us in the eyes of her father in order to quarrel us or at least weaken his love and care for us. We were dangerous rivals for her, and any means were good."

I leave the last phrase of Mendelssohn’s entry from January 15 about the stick that fell on Prokofiev’s head to the conscience of the author of the memoirs.

At this time, S.S. Prokofiev was already seriously ill with hypertension.

Arrest

A month after Prokofiev’s alleged divorce from Lina Ivanovna and marriage to Mira Alexandrovna, and two weeks after the decision of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Lina Ivanovna was arrested.

This was the next of three terrible events in the life of the family of Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev.

Lina Ivanovna was arrested on February 20, 1948. The arrest, perhaps, was not a complete surprise for Lina Kodina-Prokofieva. She did not listen to the warnings of friends and foes, continued to go to receptions at embassies, speak there in all six languages ​​she spoke, and be the center of attention. From all sides she was advised to end relations with foreigners. To her they were not “foreigners.” And unlike Sergei Sergeevich, who stopped meeting with citizens of other countries, Lina Ivanovna continued to meet with her compatriots.

But she didn’t think about arrest? - I ask Svyatoslav Sergeevich.

Maybe she even thought something. Because it seemed to her that the phone was being tapped. In those days it was not as perfect as now, and you could hear the click of the tape recorder turning on. Then she had the feeling that they were following her. But everyone lived with this feeling: since people were arresting me all around, it means maybe they’ll come for me too?

Moreover, my mother understood that receptions at Western embassies were not good for her. On her own, she made friends with many people, they met and called each other, some Frenchman and an American came to us. During the war. The Frenchman was a military man. A very nice person, by the way. It was he who visited Lina’s mother in Paris and brought back photographs of her that he had taken, which made my mother very happy. The American was a representative of the Moscow department of humanitarian aid. He brought us some incredible shoes. We even visited him; there is such a mansion on Vesnina Street.

So it’s not like mom just lay down with her face to the wall and immersed herself in her grief?

No, it's not in her character. She did not allow grief to penetrate inside, she pushed away.

Lina Ivanovna lived under a hood. She herself talks about the time leading up to the arrest and about the arrest itself. This story, unlike some others, is consistent. The arrest and camps did not cause Lina Ivanovna the unbearable pain that she experienced from the destruction of her family. In her memoirs, we read more than once in different variations that her stay in the camp followed immediately after the break with Prokofiev, but she was so overwhelmed with grief that it overshadowed new suffering.

Before her arrest, Lina Ivanovna noticed that she was being followed.

“I began to notice that I was being followed. I went to Zhenya Afinogenova and felt that they were following me. The elevator operator called the apartment and said that some young man was waiting for me downstairs and wanted to talk to me. Zhenya answered the elevator operator: “She will stay overnight." Then he left and I was able to return home.

Another time I was waiting for the bus. He came up, and there was a man standing behind me. I got out before the door closed and ran away from him. On this bus were two people from the French embassy, ​​who pretended not to know me.

Once I bought a ticket on the subway. I was wearing a light coat and a colored dress. I entered the carriage, then moved from it to another and quickly took off my coat. Thus, I got rid of surveillance."

Lina Ivanovna about the arrest:

“On the day they took me to Lubyanka, I saw men in the courtyard who were watching me. At that time I had a cold and was mostly sitting at home.

The phone rang, I went up, and they said to me: “Can you go out to get a package from your friends in Leningrad?” I said that I couldn’t, and in response invited them to come to me - I lived very close to the metro. They insisted: “No, you must come yourself.” I said I didn't feel well, but I went out and took my keys with me.

They drove up to me, to the place where I was supposed to meet them.

A man came up to me and asked, “Is that her?” Others answered in the affirmative, they pushed me into the car, and we drove past our house. The one who was sitting next to the driver when they were driving me was a real NKVD member.

I asked: “Why am I in this car? Why did you take my bag and keys?” They interrupted: “Was someone supposed to come to you this evening?” I answered: “I don’t know. Someone might run in.” I told them: "This is a mistake. I should have received the package." And they said, “The man you were about to meet is a criminal.” I said: “Let me go, I have to warn the children.”

The whole story with the package was a set-up. This happened in February. On the eve of Svyatoslav's birthday.

I was taken straight to the Lubyanka, a huge gray building in the center of Moscow. The old woman undressed me, cut off all the hooks, tore off all the buttons. Then they forced me to take a shower, took my fingerprints and pushed me into a box where only two people could stand. I was locked as if in a closet. There wasn't even a chair. They left me there. I heard the bell ringing again and again, more people coming, taking away many people. They threw mattresses on the floor for them. I was given sour black bread, some water and later a terrible soup, like a real prisoner. I was in a state of shock, terrified. I started calling someone. I have to say something to the children. They answered me: “They will be informed.”

The children were told that they could send me a change of clothes. No connection.

I wrote what I wanted them to give me. I had to wait standing all night. And the calls rang out all the time. The clang of doors closing. They took my watch, brooch, ring, sealed everything in an envelope, but never returned anything to me.

I subsequently found out that they had trashed my apartment, which is why they asked if I was expecting anyone that evening.

Svyatoslav was then twenty-four years old, and Oleg was nineteen.

I was taken out of town in a truck for interrogation. The days were gray. Through the crack I saw places not far from the house, I heard dogs barking, chickens clucked in the morning. I was interrogated."

Lina Ivanovna Kodina-Prokofieva was convicted under Article 58 and sentenced to twenty years in maximum security camps in the village of Abez, located beyond the Arctic Circle, near Vorkuta.

The next day we went to dad’s dacha to tell him that mom had been arrested. (There was no telephone at the dacha.) It was February, it was cold, the cars did not stop, and Oleg and I walked thirteen kilometers from the Perkhushkovo station.

We called, Mendelsohn opened it, was stunned at the sight of us, her eyes widened, she silently slammed the door and followed her husband.

Slammed the door?!

Yes, sure. Closed it. After all, it was cold. Winter.

But she didn’t invite you into the house?

No, but she was wearing a robe; there must have been bedlam in the house. It's not like we waited very long. But about ten to fifteen minutes. And then dad came out. He listened to us, then said: “Wait, we’ll go for a walk.” I wanted to listen to us without her. He got dressed, went out, and we walked along the road for some time, telling everything that happened, about the arrest and search. He asked us questions, very briefly. He was more silent. It was clear that the news had stunned him.

Was he amazed?

He didn't say anything, but his expression changed. Then again, maybe he was ready for this. Because of the trip to the authorities. Mysterious. But in general there were arrests all around. So he wasn't very surprised. I knew that she was going to appointments. One communist said that there is no need to do this. We arrived from Perkhushkov on foot, thirteen kilometers, in winter, and he so wanted to know all these details - he could sit with us in his office, in the warmth, and we went for a walk, so that there were no witnesses. But then, when we returned, they still called us into the house.

Oleg and Svyatoslav did not know what to do. They rushed to Shostakovich, a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. At that time, many people turned to him for help, and Shostakovich always tried to do his best. Alas, he could not help them.

Since Molotov and Kalinin could not do anything for their arrested wives - their hands were at their sides and still smiling - then the father or Shostakovich, of course, were completely powerless. Lina Ivanovna was arrested as a foreigner. While dad was there, she went to receptions with him, and then she started going alone, she had friends there, among the “enemies,” and that was enough,” explains Svyatoslav.

Svyatoslav told me that soon after his mother’s arrest, he naively turned to a lawyer for legal advice. They helped him compose a letter outlining everything that had happened and asking for a meeting, and told him to come for an answer. Svyatoslav followed him many times, the lawyer just threw up his hands: they say, there is no answer, and that’s all.

After the arrest, Svyatoslav and Oleg looked for their mother directly in Akhmatov’s style - at the information desk on Kuznetsky Most. For a long time they could not find out anything. They tried to convey something when they found out that she was in Lefortovo, but before the trial they did not accept anything. Meetings were also prohibited. Then there was a trial - not a trial, but a so-called “troika”: three people sit, dozens of people pass in front of them in turn, and in a matter of minutes they decide the fate of everyone.

Mom was found guilty of espionage and treason and sentenced to twenty years in strict camps.

Later she did not talk about the prison, about the interrogations, but from separate, very short mentions we knew that she went through the punishment cell, there were night interrogations with a bright light in the face, and much more. During these interrogations they called my father “this traitor”, “this white emigrant” and the like.

MGB's ominous breath

From the memoirs of Svyatoslav Prokofiev

Living since 1990 in France, where I was born, I often heard from people who learned about my mother’s arrest in 1948 and her subsequent deportation to

Gulag to the North, a surprised question: “What, couldn’t your father have contributed to her release?!”

This indicates a complete ignorance of the situation, orders and the general feeling of fear that reigned everywhere in the USSR. They also did not know that during this period the wives of Molotov, Kalinin (the so-called “President of the USSR”) and others were arrested. Their “unhappy” high-ranking husbands could not help in any way, since Stalin decided so!

It was already good that during this terrible time, my father, who left his family, dared to occasionally meet with us - his two sons. During one of these meetings, dad - a brilliant but naive man - suddenly says to me:

"You know, one communist told me

that you, a student at the Institute of Architecture, should go to your director and tell him that your mother was recently arrested by the MGB."

Nothing can be done - I did just that, thinking to myself: it’s good that my advisers didn’t think of me preparing a written statement. I was no longer surprised by anything. Luckily for me, instead of the director, there was his deputy, known for his decency (there were also such), Professor Nikolaev, who, instead of “add more fuel to the fire,” consoled and reassured me, offering to continue studying.

This was so unexpected in my situation that I was completely at a loss, especially since in connection with my mother’s arrest I also managed to feel the ominous breath of the MGB in my personal life.

My beloved girl Maya, a classmate with whom I was very much in love then, turned out to be the daughter of the party secretary of the district committee! In addition, she was friends with the daughter of the then all-powerful G.M. Malenkov, who also studied with us!

As Maya later told me, much later, she was rudely, literally by order, forced to break off all relations with me, threatening to “send me to my mother” in case of disobedience. And to be sure, they “advised” her to immediately marry a “trusted person.” Maya was a very interesting girl, and she had many fans. Out of fear, she didn’t tell me anything, and to me it all looked like a banal betrayal. It was difficult for me to survive these blows of fate...

In addition, at this time work was underway on my graduation project. I almost tore it off. Thank you that I had a very sympathetic consultant who helped me, and I managed to do everything.

I learned the truth about Maya about twenty years later. After her story, the poor thing only timidly asked if I could ever forgive her. I was so stunned that I didn’t answer her, but I myself think that I can’t forgive...

Prepared by Valentina Chemberdzhi

Eight years in the camps - this was the price of marriage and divorce from the great composer Sergei Prokofiev.

A book by American musicologist and professor at Princeton University Simon Morrison, “The Love and Wars of Lina Prokofiev,” has been published in the UK, which tells the story of the tragic fate of the great composer’s wife, who spent eight years in Stalin’s Gulag. The book lifts the curtain on a little-known part of the life of Sergei Prokofiev and the Spanish singer Lina Codina, who became Lina Ivanovna Prokofieva after moving to the USSR in 1936. Morrison managed to gain access to the archive of the foreign Sergei Prokofiev Foundation, where, in particular, unpublished correspondence between Lina Prokofieva and her husband is stored.

In the photo: Simon Morrison's book about Lina Prokofieva

On February 20, 1948, a telephone rang in Lina Prokofieva’s Moscow apartment. "You need to receive a package from your friends in Leningrad." Lina was alone in the apartment, not feeling well, and invited the caller to bring the package to her home. He refused and insisted on a meeting. I had to get out and go to the indicated meeting place. She was met by three unnamed men, pushed into a car and taken to Lubyanka, and then to Lefortovo prison. After nine months of humiliating and cruel interrogations, the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR issued a verdict: twenty years in a forced labor camp for espionage (Article 58-1a of the Criminal Code). This is how the author of the book Simon Morrison explains her arrest in an interview with “Top Secret”:

– Lina received Soviet citizenship, her Nansen and Spanish passports were cancelled. After that, Soviet laws fully applied to her. Immediately after the war - in 1946-1947 - a situation arose when former foreigners had some hope of returning to the West. Lina's housemate, who was French, was able to obtain permission to leave with the help of the French embassy. This forced Lina to take action. She really wanted to return to France, she wanted to see her mother, who was very old, sick and felt very lonely in Paris. Lina wrote numerous letters to the Soviet authorities asking permission to see her mother. Everything was to no avail. At this time, she very intensively attended receptions at foreign embassies - American, French, British, even Japanese - in the hope of leaving the USSR with the help of diplomats. After her arrest, she was accused of attempting to flee the country and stealing classified documents. The fact is that during the war, Lina Prokofieva worked in the Sovinformburo as a translator and speaker on foreign broadcasting. She was also accused of having connections with people declared enemies of the people, and of illegally transmitting letters to relatives and friends in France through the French embassy. All this at that time pointed to foreign espionage.

Soprano Carolina Codina was born in Madrid in 1897 into a family of opera singers. Father is Barcelona tenor Juan Codina, mother is Russian singer Olga Nemysskaya. Lina met Sergei Prokofiev in New York in 1918, seeing him for the first time at Carnegie Hall, at the premiere of his First Piano Concerto. In her youth, Lina Codina was a dazzling beauty. In addition to Russian, she spoke five more European languages. Sergei Prokofiev could not resist her charm and enchanting voice, immediately taking her under his protection. It is known that Lina became the prototype for Princess Linette from his opera “The Love for Three Oranges.” She performed several new works by Prokofiev in America and Europe, including his musical fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling.” She performed under the pseudonym Caroline Lubera (the surname of her paternal grandmother). Simon Morrison does not consider her musical abilities outstanding:

– Critical reviews of her singing were contradictory and ambiguous. Some of them were laudatory, some were very negative. Critics wondered why the outstanding composer needed to invite his wife to perform his works. However, some of her performances were very successful, especially on radio. One of the most high-profile was her appearance at the Milanese opera immediately after her marriage, where she performed the role of Gilda in Verdi's opera Rigoletto with great success. There were other opera roles. In the Soviet Union, she had several appearances on Comintern Radio. But in general, her musical career did not work out, which she knew well. Sergei Prokofiev tried to support her in her creative endeavors, providing the opportunity to perform her works, although she herself complained that he was neglecting her career. Of course, she performed against the backdrop of a brilliant composer, and the comparison was not in her favor.

Five years after Lina’s fateful visit to New York’s Carnegie Hall, the most romantic period in her life ended: Sergei and Lina got married. The marriage registration took place in the town hall of the small Bavarian town of Ettal in the presence of the burgomaster. At that time, Prokofiev was writing the opera “The Fiery Angel” based on the novel of the same name by Valery Bryusov. In this opera, love passions rage, which, according to some researchers of Prokofiev’s work, reflected the feelings of its author at that time. However Professor Morrison is skeptical about this version:

– Their marriage was never happy. Lina married Prokofiev while pregnant. Prokofiev cannot be called a good family man. He did not want to get married and repeatedly told Lina not to count on marriage. He wanted to lead the cosmopolitan life of an artist with connections in different countries. Lina liked to be his companion and accompany him during tours and social events. It must be said that even before marriage their relationship was very uneven; she repeatedly left him, returned again, he left her and lived with her again. When Lina became pregnant, Prokofiev considered himself obliged to marry. After the marriage, they settled in Paris and led a family lifestyle. There, Lina became pregnant again, although Sergei Prokofiev did not have a developed paternal instinct. Their marriage survived mainly because they rarely saw each other and often lived parallel lives. In the Soviet Union, they lived in the same apartment and were forced to tolerate each other. Despite the terrible time and the political problems that arose for him in connection with party criticism, it was relatively easy for Prokofiev to adapt to his native culture, which he knew well, but it was much more difficult for Lina to live in an alien atmosphere and non-native culture. And the atmosphere in which they lived was terrible. Prokofiev realized that he had fallen into a trap. It was a time of upheaval. Lina demanded that her husband take some steps to return to the West. Eventually, Prokofiev developed a relationship with a young woman who devoted herself entirely to him, helping him with his work, becoming something of a secretary and housekeeper. She did not demand anything from him, did not reproach him for anything, and in her company Prokofiev felt more comfortable and calmer. Before the final break, the Prokofievs discussed the future of their marriage. Lina said: “I want to go abroad with the children, and you can, if you want, stay here, I’ll even give you a divorce.” No matter how hard Lina tried to save her husband, one fine day he left. Prokofiev then told his eldest son Svyatoslav: “Someday you will understand why I did this,” but he could never understand it.

The young woman Simon Morrison is talking about was a student at the Mira Mendelson Literary Institute. Mira (Maria) Abramovna Mendelson, when she met Prokofiev in 1938 at a sanatorium in Kislovodsk, was 23 years old, he was 47. Her father Abram Solomonovich Mendelson was a famous economist, an employee of the State Planning Committee and an old Bolshevik. Mira wrote mediocre poetry, was an active Komsomol member and a typical product of the Soviet system. She helped Prokofiev write penitential patriotic articles on political topics, which he was forced to publish in response to criticism from the authorities who accused him of formalism. She could not be called an attractive woman. She was a “gray mouse” who completely dissolved in the personality of Prokofiev, to whom she was infinitely devoted. In short, Mira was the exact opposite of Lina. Three years after meeting her, in March 1941, Sergei Prokofiev left his wife and children - Svyatoslav and Oleg - and went to Mira Mendelsohn. Three months later, the war began, and Prokofiev began the divorce procedure from Lina only after it ended. In November 1947, Sergei Prokofiev turned to the court of the Sverdlovsk district of Moscow with a request for a divorce. Five days later, the court delivered a verdict that caused astonishment in legal and musical circles. Professor Morrison explains:

– When Prokofiev decided to leave Lina and the children forever and marry Mira Mendelsohn, he repeatedly asked Lina to grant him a divorce, to which she invariably refused. Of course, Lina understood that her safety as a foreigner was largely ensured by her husband’s fame and reputation. After the divorce, she could simply be expelled from Moscow. I think that Prokofiev’s divorce from her largely served as a catalyst for her arrest. She was arrested a month after her marriage to Prokofiev was dissolved by a Soviet court and her ex-husband formalized his second marriage to Mira Mendelsohn. But she had no idea about this and in the camp continued to consider herself Prokofiev’s legal wife. She did not know for a long time that the Moscow court, facilitating the composer’s new marriage, ruled that his marriage to Lina, concluded in 1923 in Ettal, could not be considered legal in the Soviet Union, since it was not registered at the Soviet consulate in Germany. A second court decision followed, confirming the first. At one time, this court ruling caused a noticeable public outcry and controversy in the Soviet legal community about its legality. Almost immediately after the court verdict, Prokofiev and Mira registered their marriage in the Moscow registry office, without notifying Lina about it. Their marriage was officially formalized on January 15, 1948, and on February 20, Lina was arrested.

The provision of Soviet law, according to which marriages concluded abroad, in order to be considered legal in the USSR, must be registered in Soviet embassies, was subsequently overturned by the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, this situation, which turned a legal marriage into a farce, turned out to be in the hands of Mira and Prokofiev, who were not slow to take advantage of it. Friends of Lina Prokofieva both in the West and in Russia reproach the great composer for indifference to the fate of his first wife, for unjustified cruelty, for not lifting a finger to save the mother of his children or try to rescue her from the camp, and for that he abandoned the children to their fate. Simon Morrison does not justify the six-time winner of the Stalin Prize:

– As far as I know, Prokofiev did not try to intercede for his wife and did nothing to free her. He helped her financially when she was in the camp, but did it not directly, but through the children, giving them money for food parcels. After the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1948 criticizing the music of Prokofiev and Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev’s position was very precarious. I don’t think that in such a situation he had any opportunity to ask for his ex-wife. I know that at that time he appealed a couple of times during receptions at the French embassy to French diplomats with a request to intervene and help Lina. No action was taken. Shostakovich, to whom Prokofiev’s children turned, behaved completely differently. He was then a deputy of the Supreme Council and knew Lina well. Shostakovich many times appealed to all authorities with a request to review the sentence on Lina Prokofieva.

At first, Lina Prokofieva was transferred to a women’s camp in the village of Abez in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, and a few years later she was transferred to a camp in Potma. Little is known about her torment. Writer Evgenia Taratuta, who served time together with Lina in Abez, said in her memoirs that Lina participated in camp amateur performances and sang in the choir:

“My closest neighbor turned out to be a Spanish woman. It was the famous singer Lina Lyubera, her last name was Prokofieva. Her husband was the famous composer Prokofiev... Lina Ivanovna suffered greatly from the cold. She and I sometimes worked in the same team, transporting barrels of slop from the kitchen. Lina knew nothing about Prokofiev’s death. He died on March 5, 1953, on the same day as Stalin, and there was no news about this anywhere, and her sons did not write to her about it, or maybe they did, but the letter did not arrive. One day in August, when we were transporting a barrel of slop, a woman came up to us and said that it was broadcast on the radio that a concert in memory of Prokofiev had taken place in Argentina. Lina Ivanovna cried bitterly, we let her go to the barracks. Then I went and gave her tea. She cried for a long time..."

In May 1956, Lina Prokofieva was rehabilitated and a month later was released, having served eight of the twenty years to which she was sentenced. Thanks to the efforts of the General Secretary of the Union of Composers of the USSR Tikhon Khrennikov, she was provided with an apartment in Moscow. Khrennikov got her a pension - seven hundred rubles a month. And Prokofiev bequeathed all his fortune and copyrights to Mira Mendelson. Lina demanded that she and her sons also be declared his legal heirs. To do this, it was necessary first of all to cancel the court ruling on the invalidity of her marriage. In April 1957, the Moscow City Court overturned the court decision of November 1947 on the illegality of the marriage of Lina and Sergei Prokofiev. At the same court hearing, Mira's right to her husband's inheritance was also considered. The court made a Solomonic decision: both Mira and Lina were declared legal wives. So Prokofiev ended up with two widows. Both widows and sons were declared heirs, and therefore the right to receive royalties for the performance of Prokofiev’s music both in Russia and abroad (of which the state took 60 percent). Mira Mendelsohn died in June 1968 at the age of 54. She and Prokofiev had no children; She bequeathed her part of the inheritance, as well as Prokofiev’s scores and archive, to the Moscow Museum of Musical Culture named after M.I. Glinka.

After her release, Lina again shone at receptions at foreign embassies and music premieres. Significant foreign exchange earnings from abroad as royalties for the performance of Prokofiev’s works allowed her not only to live comfortably, but also to collect jewelry and furs. This is how the author of the book “Love and Wars of Lina Prokofieva” paints a portrait of his heroine in an interview with “Top Secret”:

– Lina Prokofieva was a difficult person. I would call her capricious and even frivolous. At the same time, she had a wonderful sense of humor, she could be the life of the party, and could carry on a conversation on musical or literary topics. She spoke several European languages. People who met her at the end of her life, after all her terrible experiences in Russia, note her wit, lively, sarcastic mind. In her youth, she was an incredible beauty, a charming and elegant socialite. I think this is the main thing that attracted Prokofiev to her. Her interest in art coexisted with her interest in glamor, jewelry and luxury. She was smart, insightful, and good at recognizing people. Before her arrest, Lina was always surrounded by admirers who admired her, and she became interested in some of them. I think there are several connections here. True, these connections were short-lived and frivolous. I don’t know anything about her life in the camp; she really didn’t like to remember it. But no matter what happened, Lina always valued her relationship with Sergei Prokofiev.

All this time, Lina never stopped striving to go to the West. She unsuccessfully appealed to Brezhnev with requests to give her the opportunity to see her elderly mother. In 1971, her youngest son Oleg received permission to travel to London for the funeral of his English wife, who died in Russia from viral hepatitis, and to see his daughter from this marriage. Oleg remained to live and work in Britain. In 1974, one of Lina’s letters, addressed to the then KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, asking for permission to travel to the UK for a month to see her son and granddaughter, received an answer: three months later she received a call from OVIR and was informed that she had been granted a three-month visa for a trip to the UK. By this time she was already 77 years old. She didn't return. But Lina could not be considered a refugee. The Soviet authorities did not want the political scandal that would arise if the widow of the great Prokofiev asked for political asylum in the West. The Soviet embassy in London extended her visa without any problems. In the West, Lina Prokofieva divided her time between London and Paris, where her eldest son and his family later moved. She spent a lot of time in the USA and Germany. In London in 1983, she founded the Sergei Prokofiev Foundation, to which she donated her extensive archive, which included correspondence with her husband. She was endlessly invited to Prokofiev anniversaries, festivals, and concerts. Lina Prokofieva celebrated her last, 91st birthday on October 21, 1988 in a hospital in Bonn, where her sons arrived. She was mortally ill, but took a sip of champagne. She was transported to London, to the Winston Churchill Hospital, where she died on January 3, 1989. Recordings of soprano Lina Lubera singing have not been preserved

Perhaps more than usual, this book owes its appearance to the goodwill of all those who, through their participation, gave the author the opportunity to write it.

With deep gratitude, I name first of all the son of Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev and Lina Ivanovna Prokofieva, Svyatoslav Sergeevich Prokofiev, who warmly responded to the initiative to tell the truth about the fate of his mother, and who provided me with personal support. His in-depth interview forms the backbone of the book, and the materials he provides are unique. Together with his son Sergei Svyatoslavovich, who also took an active part in the fate of the book, he took upon himself the work of reading the manuscript, which served to benefit its text and was expressed in invaluable advice and comments for the author. The manuscript received approval and was supplemented by Sergei Olegovich Prokofiev. The reader will appreciate his lengthy and deeply penetrating story into the essence of Lina Prokofieva’s nature.

Lina Ivanovna’s grandchildren Sergei Svyatoslavovich and Sergei Olegovich shared photographic materials from family and personal archives, which served as irreplaceable illustrations for the image of the heroine.

Heartfelt thanks to Noelle Mann, curator of the Prokofiev Archive in London, who made some of his material available.

Mr. Andre Schmidt, for his emotional and witty story about Lina.

Dmitry Nikolaevich Chukovsky for moral support and faith in success.

Sofya Prokofieva for her vivid stories about Lina Ivanovna and Mira Alexandrovna.

Special thanks to Natalya Novosiltsov, in a conversation with whom the idea of ​​writing a book about Lina Prokofieva first flared up. The two and a half years it took to write it, she took a direct part in the work, delving into all the intricacies of the past and present.

Thanks to my first readers, husband, daughter and son, they were with me all the time.

The author of Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev’s “Diary” served as a guiding star from beginning to end.

From the history of writing

Why here and now? Where does the story begin?

It is hidden in distant times - the author needs to look into the first half of the last century, more precisely in the forties, the last pre-war year in Moscow, when for the first time a heroine appeared before the eyes of a four-year-old girl at that time, as some kind of fabulously beautiful female creature - moreover, colored and colorful! (against the background of the dull and dull habitual clothes of those around). Colorful and sparkling. How? With your eyes? Shiny black hair? Precious stones? Everyone!

This is how she saw Lina Prokofiev, the wife of Sergei Prokofiev, then.

Then the war broke out, the evacuation, and everyone dispersed in all directions.

In 1942, still at the height of the war, having returned with her mother from evacuation to Moscow, the girl went to school, minded her own business, almost ran into the yard where her interests were concentrated, and her parents - composers - continued to be friends with Sergei Prokofiev, before whom they worshiped as a genius who descended to earth from other worlds, a completely special person, free, independent, gifted in everything he came into contact with, a great composer and pianist, conductor, writer, chess player, bridge player, traveler, loved in all aspects.

His music was constantly playing in the house, and the girl went to the Bolshoi Theater to see “Cinderella” and “Romeo and Juliet” dozens of times.

The parents met as families, but the place of the motley beauty next to Sergei Sergeevich was taken by a thin lady, usually in black, a brittle reed, who spoke through her nose, quietly and affectionately. Mom called her Mira. They were friends, communicated, had fun together, every meeting with Prokofiev was a source of great joy, pride and admiration for the parents.

Little did the girl know that the thin, benevolent woman had brought drama into the life of the Prokofiev family.

The pre-war vision has disappeared somewhere.

And “Mira” came, bringing cakes and letters from Prokofiev.

Many years passed before Lina Ivanovna Prokofieva again crossed the threshold of our house. For 20 years, great misfortunes shook her family. Her husband left her and married Mira Mendelsohn. His music was condemned as hostile and harmful to the people and was prohibited from being performed. Lina herself was arrested in 1948 and ended up first in prison and then in Stalin’s camps in the Arctic. The sons were left alone, living under the supervision of friends. In 1953, Sergei Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin. She was released in 1956. Now she was no longer so young and dazzling. But in the expression of the still beautiful face there were still no traces of everyday life, life was in full swing in Lina, she joked, laughed, she was still “motley” in her impeccable toilet, she brought a holiday to the house.

From the beginning of the sixties until Lina Ivanovna’s departure from the USSR in 1974, we were bound by close friendship, and I never ceased to admire her, already knowing in the most general terms the vicissitudes of her life. However, the thought never occurred to me that it was necessary to describe this simultaneously beautiful and tragic life.

Fate intervened: Lina Ivanovna resurrected in front of me on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the fourteenth year of my life in Catalunya. The sea has always been Lina Prokofieva’s passion; it was at the sea that her first conversation with Natalya Novosiltsov happened.

Natalya Novosiltsov is a professor at the University of Barcelona, ​​an expert on Russian art of the beginning of the century and the author of a book about it, a representative of an ancient Russian family who has lived in Spain for a long time. On the radio “Catalunya Music” (by the way, in the first years of my life in Catalunya, the programs of this radio station aroused such delight in me that I called my essay about Catalunya, published in Russia, “Catalunya Music”), she heard a program dedicated to Sergei Prokofiev , from which I learned about the fate of his first wife - a Spanish Catalan! I told Natalya Novosiltsov that I was friends with Lina and had known the composer’s entire family since childhood. In a conversation with her, the thought flared up that I should definitely write about this wonderful woman, who experienced the greatness and disasters of the twentieth century, of which she was the same age.

I started by going to Svyatoslav Prokofiev, the eldest son of the composer, who has lived in Paris since 1991. The youngest son, Oleg Prokofiev, died in 1998 in England.

With excitement, I crossed the threshold of Svyatoslav’s Parisian apartment, where, surrounded by many disks, books, recordings, videotapes, paintings, albums, he seemed to continue to live with his parents, surrounded by their portraits by Natalia Goncharova, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Shukhaev. The walls of the spacious living room were decorated with paintings by Petrov-Vodkin and Malyavin - it was as if I had returned to the past: Sergei Sergeevich, young, brilliant, came to life, and a beautiful vision of childhood came to life. The face of Lina Prokofieva looked at me from the portraits, much younger than in the forties when I saw her for the first time.

Svyatoslav Prokofiev fully fulfilled the destiny of the son of the great composer: his long and painstaking work on his father’s manuscripts culminated in the appearance of two volumes of Prokofiev’s “Diary”, a unique work in the literary, musical and historical sense, which put an end to countless unscrupulous and far from the truth speculations about life and the composer's creativity.

Prokofiev was a wonderful writer and he himself wrote about himself: “If I had not been a composer, I would probably have been a writer or poet.”

In the Diary, Prokofiev wrote openly, accurately and in detail, with an excellent sense of humor, day after day about everything that happened in his life, from September 1907 to June 1933. But it would be in vain to try to describe the Diary. . He exists.

On the pages of the Diary in 1919, our heroine, “Lynette”, Lina, the future wife of the composer, appears. In his opera The Love for Three Oranges, Prokofiev replaced Violetta's name with Lynette, in honor of his future wife.

Svyatoslav Prokofiev was very enthusiastic about the intention of finally writing the truth about his mother, whose image was distorted in the Soviet press, which caused great suffering to her sons. She lived only in the memory of people who knew her; Soviet contemporaries preferred not to mention her. The second wife doesn’t even say a word about her arrest. In Russia they don’t like to repent.

Svyatoslav Prokofiev gave me letters from my parents, copies of many documents and gave me not only his blessing, but also a multi-page interview about my mother’s life. In his New Year's greetings for 2005, he writes to me: “I wish you a special wish for the successful creation of a unique book about my mother. May justice prevail!”

In Paris, I met Lina’s grandson, Svyatoslav’s son, Sergei, who spoke vividly about his grandmother.

I have known another grandson of Sergei Prokofiev - the son of Oleg Prokofiev - for more than forty years. In Moscow we lived in the same house. A prominent anthroposophist, now settled in Switzerland, he witnessed the life of Lina Ivanovna both in Moscow and in the West. His story about “Avia” is also included on these pages.

In the London Prokofiev Archive at the foundation founded by Lina Ivanovna, Natalya Novosiltsov received copies of her stories about the years she spent in the USSR with Sergei Prokofiev and Stalin’s camps.

My life developed in such a way that I knew well not only Lina Ivanovna, but also Mira Alexandrovna. The years have revealed much in the appearance and character of these two, such different women, opposite in their entire makeup. Unlike Lina Ivanovna, a talented storyteller and interlocutor who did not like to write, Mira Alexandrovna was committed to describing events and her impressions of them, but her speech was poor. Her diaries have now also been published. She tried to imitate Prokofiev and also carefully recorded what was happening. However, due to a lack of literary and artistic talent, she left us, although rich in important events, but at the same time self-revealing documents, with the stamp of the Soviet worldview. We must not, however, forget that she, bypassing all the laws, became the wife of Sergei Sergeevich, whom he loved and who also loved him in her own way. Caesar's wife...

In 1936, Prokofiev and his family returned from Paris to their homeland, which they had left in 1918. At the height of Stalin's terror, he immediately fell into the orbit of the NKVD's attention. It is surprising that back in 1925, when the Soviet government, it would seem, did not care at all about musical problems, it made a decision: “to allow S. S. Prokofiev and I. F. Stravinsky to come to the USSR.” Prestige!

The authorities set the goal of returning and preserving the decorative figure of a genius in the USSR, but not his marriage with a free-thinking foreigner they absolutely did not need. The policy towards Lina was not limited to just her arrest - they went further: skillfully spreading all sorts of rumors among the intelligentsia, they completely distorted her image. While she reigned among friends, musicians, artists, writers, she aroused only admiration. But here she is arrested! Disappeared for many years. She's gone. And then gradually her image began to transform into an extravagant lover of absent-minded pastimes, not too burdened with worries about her children and husband, and also a foreigner! She had already been arrested on charges of espionage, was already in Lefortovo prison, and the gossips kept judging and making jokes about how she disposed of her jewelry. Only a few of the most faithful friends knew and remembered the truth, but then it could not be spoken out loud, and then they died.

Her own story about her life, cut off “for some reason” in the pre-war period, was also falsified in the collection of memoirs about Prokofiev, published in the early sixties. Boring smooth writing reminds of only one genre: an editorial in the newspaper Pravda. Soviet cliches and clichés in describing the most striking events of the Parisian period of life are as far from the real Lina, lively, sparkling with energy, sharp-tongued, as the accusation of espionage is from the truth. And an abyss of patriotism.

But what, perhaps, our illustrious organization succeeded especially well in was completely erasing his first wife from Prokofiev’s life. They lived together for twenty very happy years, but with the appearance of Mira Mendlson with her impeccable profile, Lina’s existence begins to be hushed up, and foreign researchers are surprised to notice that Prokofiev also had a first wife, of Spanish origin, and he seemed to be quite happy with her . Even very happy. However, there are also biographies where there is not a word about Mira, since the marriage with her was not legal.

The tragedy of S. S. Prokofiev is partly rooted in the essence of his completely unusual personality. A brilliant composer, the smartest and most talented person, he remained trusting, whole, untouched, to put it mildly, by the “peculiarities” of the society into which he found himself. He naively believed in the power of art, which no one would dare to encroach on. He did not think about the second, third, or third plan of behavior of those around him. Lina’s tragedy was of the same origin: a foreigner who understood by instinct, but was not able to fully comprehend Soviet reality! – she became her victim.

Lina Prokofieva herself rarely touched on her personal troubles; she did not like to talk about the camps, calling them “The North,” and if we go to the extent of talking about her, it is only with the goal of restoring justice to the composer’s first wife, even after her death. She was, she lived, they loved each other, they had two sons. Perhaps Prokofiev would not judge us too harshly.

Sad events by no means constitute the only essence of Lina Ivanovna’s life. She was a beloved and loving wife, artist, singer, she was friends with the greats of this world, she knew what the Western elite, Europe was, she also learned what Russia was, which she was ready to love and accept. We will try to talk about all this, based on personal acquaintance, family archives, Prokofiev’s “Diary”, notes and letters of Lina Ivanovna herself, conversations with Svyatoslav Prokofiev and Lina Ivanovna’s two grandchildren, her friends, on documentary materials obtained from the London Archive at foundation founded by Lina Prokofieva, and much more.

And let's start from the very beginning.

Barcelona

Chapter first
Princess Lynette

Over the summer, I promised Linette that Princess Violet, for whom I came up with a name completely by accident, would be renamed Princess Linette. Today, when we reached Violetta, I announced the renaming of Smolens.

Why? - he asked.

I answered: “That’s how it is with Gozzi.”

Happiness smiled upon me when, by combining Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev’s “Diary” and archival tapes of Lina Kodina’s memoirs, I was able to find out the date of that Sergei Prokofiev concert in New York, to which young Lina first came as a listener. She was twenty-one years old, he was twenty-seven.

“Today there are two more rehearsals and a concert in Carnegie in the evening. The hall is full, which is unusual for Altshuler's concerts. The first number was Rachmaninoff's Symphony in e-moll, which I listened to with great pleasure. After the symphony, the author, although he was hiding behind his wife, was found and given an ovation, forcing him to stand up and bow.

Then followed a series of small orchestral pieces, among them my “Scherzo for four bassoons.” It was played very smartly and as quickly as I did not expect.

Altshuler placed it in the program ahead of the piano concerto “to establish good relations between the audience and me.” The audience was really pleased and even demanded a repeat.

The concert went well and I was called seven times. ‹…›"

“The first time I saw Sergei Prokofiev,” says Lina, “was when he played his First Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall. The orchestra consisted mainly of Russian musicians and was conducted by Vladimir Altshuler. I went to this concert thanks to my mother’s friend Vera Donchakova, a famous biologist and biochemist, as well as a big music lover. She worked for a large American pharmaceutical company. I spent several summer holidays with them at Woods Hole in Connecticut and was greatly impressed by the battle formation of the generations lined up around the table as in the good old days.

One day Vera Donchakova called her mother and invited her to a concert of a certain young Russian composer and pianist Prokofiev. Whatever they called him back then: a Bolshevik decadent and God knows what else! Some are a futurist who has just arrived from mysterious Russia; others - an interesting musician; still others are a phenomenal virtuoso, and so on. I grew up in a musical family, studied singing, listened to a lot of music, went to concerts and could not miss such an event. However, then this was not yet considered an event. I heard the end of the conversation, asked what was going on, and said: “Oh, I’d really like to go too.”

It was December 10, 1918, and I only remember the First Piano Concerto and the young composer who played it. I was stunned! I’ve never heard anything like it in my life, neither in terms of rhythm, nor in the sense of the ease with which he coped with the text. I was about twenty years old and was very impressed and was clapping like crazy at the end. The two ladies greeted this performance with polite applause, and when they saw my enthusiasm, they laughed and remarked: “Look at her!” She must have fallen in love." It goes without saying how young people react in such cases. I was terribly indignant and said: “Don’t you understand? It’s amazing – what a rhythm, what a beautiful theme!” They just laughed in response.

Prokofiev was tall, very thin and very handsome. He had his hair cut short, according to the fashion of the time. And after he played, he bowed in a strange way - from a standing position, he suddenly seemed to fold in half, like a jackknife.

When we got home, they started teasing me and I got really angry.

A few days later, our friends Stahl called: Vera Yanakopoulos and her husband Alexey Fedorovich Stahl, a very important person in Russia before the revolution. Now they lived in America. He was not handsome, but he had great charm.

They invited me to Prokofiev's recital in the old Aeolian Hall, and not in the Town Hall, as many people later tried to convince me.

I replied that I would be happy to go, and they said that they already knew Prokofiev, that he was an interesting person, and they wanted to introduce me to him. I said that I really like his music and the way he plays, I’ll gladly go and listen to him, but I’m not at all going to get to know him. Why not, they asked. And I replied that if I met him, my mother and all her friends would start saying: “Look!” And she also argues that she fell in love with him, and not just with his music and acting. “Young people are very sensitive to such remarks from their elders.

I still went to the concert without telling my mother about it, as far as I remember. After the concert, the Steels wanted to go to the art room. I said: “You go, and I’ll wait for you here.” I was completely adamant. Then I waited and waited, they still didn’t come, and I decided that I had missed them and went in search. At this time, the door to the artistic room opened and someone came out. I looked inside. Sergei took a few steps forward, raised his eyes and smiled at me. I smiled back at him. He said something friendly like: “Here she is,” and we were introduced. Then we all chatted a lot, I still wasn’t a savage. That's when we spoke to him for the first time. This event was the first of an incredible series of events that followed - it happened! Was it possible to imagine then how this would end in the future; there was a long, long way ahead; but there was something right in what happened, maybe because I was a brunette and he was blond...”

“When I arrived at Eolin Hall, the hall was full. It was nice. “I immediately went out to play,” Prokofiev writes about the concert in the Aeolian Hall, “and was greeted with an ovation, but—damn the tight piano!”

Having mastered the tight new Steinway, Prokofiev, as usual, talks in detail about the performance of each piece.

“I played Rachmaninoff simply very well, and Scriabin was less fair in terms of accuracy, but the 12th Etude was very impressive. ‹…› I was called ten times during breaks and eight times at the end, including three encores. Then I was taken to the artistic foyer of the hall, where a mass of musical people were packed and where they enthusiastically congratulated me. About fifty people tore off my hand. The success exceeded expectations."

The steel noticed that the acquaintance went well and invited the young people to spend a weekend with them at their home on Staten Island. Lina did not answer yes or no. They clarified that they invite many guests. But even so, her mother was unhappy with this idea. Lina hardly asked for permission.

This is how Sergei Prokofiev and Lina first met with mutual friends at home.

“They rented a house on Staten Island,” says Lina. – She was a Brazilian singer named Yanakopoulos and enjoyed very great success at that time, and her husband was a Russian, a very famous person in Russia. To this day I remember very well Stahl, this fox, with his red beard and narrow, sparkling, mischievous eyes, smiling at me across the table. Just think, in Russia he was a member of the Duma. That time they only had a few people.”

“Do you like to walk?” – Sergei asked me. “Of course, I like to walk,” I answered. And we went into the forest. We walked for a very long time, got lost and didn’t know how to find our way back. I was very timid, but he had recently arrived from Russia, and I was terribly interested in everything he could tell about her. Although my Russian was not yet fluent at that moment, I still managed to maintain a conversation.

In 1918, Sergei Sergeevich Prokofiev started an album in which all his friends were supposed to leave notes on the same topic: “What do you think about the sun?” It was not by chance that the composer chose it, because the sun is the source of life, and he himself has always, in all his works, been the singer of life.

We know what kind of composer Prokofiev was from his works, but we can best learn about what kind of person he was, what he loved, what he strove for, from his “Autobiography.”

“I have had a penchant for recording since childhood, and it was encouraged by my parents,” says Sergei Prokofiev on the first pages of “Autobiography.” “At the age of six I was already writing music. At seven, having learned to play chess, I started a notebook and began writing down games; the first of them is the “shepherd’s” checkmate I received in three moves. In nine years, stories of fighting tin soldiers were written, taking into account losses and diagrams of movements. At twelve I spied my music professor writing a diary. It seemed absolutely wonderful, and I began to run my own, under a terrible secret from everyone.”

Prokofiev was born and spent his childhood on the Sontsovka estate (in the current Donetsk region), where his father, a learned agronomist, was the manager. Already as a mature man, Prokofiev recalled with pleasure the Sontsovo steppe freedom, games in the garden with friends - village children, the beginning of music lessons under the guidance of his mother, Maria Grigorievna.

Not yet knowing the notes, according to his ears, the boy was trying to play something of his own on the piano. And he learned notes, mainly in order to write down “his own”. And at the age of nine, after a trip to Moscow and under the impression of the first opera he heard (it was “Faust” by Gounod), Seryozha decided to compose his own opera, the plot of which he also came up with himself. It was an opera “The Giant” in three acts with adventures, fights and so on.

Prokofiev's parents were educated people and themselves took on the boy's initial education in all school subjects. But, of course, they could not teach the rules of composing music. Therefore, taking her son on one of her usual winter trips to Moscow, Maria Grigorievna brought him to the famous composer and teacher Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev, who advised him to invite the young composer Reinhold Moritsevich Gliere, who had just graduated from the conservatory, to Sontsovka for the summer to study with Seryozha.

Gliere spent two summers in a row in Sontsovka, hanging out with Seryozha, and also playing chess and croquet with him - in the role of no longer a teacher, but an older comrade. And when in the fall of 1904, thirteen-year-old Sergei Prokofiev came to St. Petersburg to take an exam at the conservatory, he brought with him an unusually substantial baggage of works. The thick folder contained two operas, a sonata, a symphony and many small piano pieces - “Songs” - written under the direction of Gliere. Some of the “Songs” were so original and sharp in sound that one of Seryozha’s friends advised calling them not “Songs”, but “Dogs”, because they “bite”.

Years of study at the conservatory

At the conservatory, Seryozha was the youngest among his classmates. And, of course, it was difficult for him to make friends with them, especially since he sometimes, out of mischief, counted the number of errors in the musical problems of each of the students, calculated the average figure for a certain period - and the results for many were disappointing...

But then another student appeared at the conservatory, in the uniform of a lieutenant of a sapper battalion, always very restrained, strict, smart. This was Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky, a future famous composer who became the head of the Moscow school of composers in Soviet times. Despite the difference in years (Myaskovsky was twenty-five, and Prokofiev was fifteen), a lifelong friendship began between them. They always showed each other their works and discussed them - personally and in letters.

In the classes of the theory of composition and free composition, Prokofiev, in general, was not at home - his unique talent was too disrespectful to the conservatory tradition. Prokofiev did not even dare show his most daring works to his teachers, knowing that this would cause bewilderment or irritation. The attitude of the teachers was reflected in very average grades in Prokofiev’s composer’s diploma. But the young musician had one more specialty in reserve - piano - for which he graduated from the conservatory again in the spring of 1914.

“If I was indifferent to the poor quality of the composer’s diploma,” Prokofiev later recalled, “this time my ambition got to me, and I decided to finish first in piano.”

Prokofiev took a risk: instead of a classical piano concerto, he decided to play his own First Concerto, which had just been published, handing over the notes to the examiners in advance. The jubilant music of the concert, full of youthful enthusiasm, captivated the audience, Prokofiev’s performance was triumphant, and he received a diploma with honors and the Anton Rubinstein Prize.

Results of creative activity

The creative energy of the young composer Prokofiev was truly volcanic. He worked quickly, boldly, tirelessly, striving to cover a wide variety of genres and forms. The first piano concerto was followed by the second, and after that the first violin concerto, opera, ballet, romances.

One of the works of S.S. Prokofiev is especially characteristic of the early period. This is the “Scythian Suite”, created on the basis of the music of a failed ballet. The worship of pagan gods, the frantic “Dance of the Evil Ones”, the quiet and mysterious picture of the sleeping Scythian steppe and, finally, the dazzling finale - “Sunrise” - all this is conveyed in stunningly bright orchestral colors, spontaneous increases in sonority, and energetic rhythms. The inspired optimism of the suite, the light that permeates it, is all the more remarkable because it was created during the difficult years of the First World War.

Sergei Prokofiev very quickly entered the first rank of composers, known not only at home, but also abroad, although his music has always caused controversy, and some works, especially stage ones, waited for years to be performed. But it was the stage that especially attracted the composer. I was attracted by the opportunity, following the path of Mussorgsky, to express in musical intonations the most subtle, secret shades of feeling, to create living human characters.

True, he also did this in chamber music, for example, in the vocal fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling” (after Andersen). Each of the inhabitants of the poultry yard is endowed with its own unique character: a sedate mother duck, small enthusiastic ducklings and the main character himself, unhappy and despised by everyone before turning into a beautiful swan. Having heard this fairy tale by Prokofiev, A. M. Gorky exclaimed: “But he wrote this about himself, about himself!”

The works of the young Prokofiev are surprisingly varied and sometimes sharply contrasting. In 1918, his “Classical Symphony” was performed for the first time - an elegant composition sparkling with fun and subtle humor. Its name, as if emphasizing the deliberate stylization - imitation of the manner of Haydn and Mozart - is now perceived by us without quotation marks: this is a true classic of music of the Soviet period. In the composer's work, the symphony began a bright and clear line, which is drawn right up to his later works - the ballet “Cinderella”, the Seventh Symphony.

And almost simultaneously with the “Classical Symphony”, a grandiose vocal-symphonic work “The Seven of Them” arose, again, like the “Scythian Suite”, reviving images of the deepest antiquity, but at the same time with some complex and unclear associations associated with the revolutionary events that shook the 1917 Russia and the whole world. The “strange turn” of creative thought later surprised Prokofiev himself.

Abroad

An even stranger twist occurred in the composer’s biography itself. In the spring of 1918, having received a foreign passport, he left for America, not listening to the advice of friends who warned him: “When you return, you will not be understood.” Indeed, a long stay abroad (until 1933) had a negative impact on the composer’s contact with the audience, especially since its composition has changed and expanded greatly over the years.

But the years spent abroad did not mean a complete separation from the homeland. Three concert trips to the Soviet Union were an opportunity to communicate with both old friends and new audiences. In 1926, the opera “The Love for Three Oranges,” conceived in his homeland but written abroad, was staged in Leningrad. The year before, Prokofiev wrote the ballet Leap of Steel, a series of scenes from the life of the young Soviet republic. Colorful everyday sketches and musical and choreographic portraits of the Commissioner, the Orator, the Worker, and the Sailor are adjacent to industrial paintings (“Factory”, “Hammers”).

This work found life only on the concert stage in the form of a symphonic suite. In 1933, Prokofiev finally returned to his homeland, traveling outside its borders only for a short time. The years following his return turned out to be perhaps the most fruitful in his life and generally very productive. One after another, works are created, and each of them marks a new, high stage in a particular genre. The opera “Semyon Kotko”, the ballet “Romeo and Juliet”, the music for the film “Alexander Nevsky”, on the basis of which the composer created the oratorio - all this was included in the golden fund of music of the Soviet period.

To convey the plot of Shakespeare's tragedy through the means of dance and dance music - such a task seemed impossible and even unnatural to many. Prokofiev approached her as if no ballet conventions existed.

In particular, he abandoned constructing the ballet as a series of complete numbers, in the pauses between which the dancers bow and thank the audience for the applause. In Prokofiev, both music and choreographic action develop continuously, following the laws of drama. This ballet, first staged in Leningrad, turned out to be an outstanding artistic event, especially since Galina Ulanova became the unrivaled Juliet.

And a completely unprecedented task was solved by the composer in “Cantata for the 20th Anniversary of October”. The music is written to a documentary text: it uses articles, speeches and letters of K. Marx and V. I. Lenin. The work was so unheard of new that the cantata had to wait for 20 years to be performed...

Different stories, different genres...

Works of the mature period

But, taking a general look at the works of the mature period and comparing them with the early ones, one can clearly see the general trend: the irrepressible effervescence of creative thought is replaced by wise balance, interest in the incredible, fabulous, legendary is replaced by interest in real human destinies (“Semyon Kotko” - an opera about the young soldier), to the heroic past of his native country (“Alexander Nevsky”, opera “War and Peace”), to the eternal theme of love and death (“Romeo and Juliet”).

At the same time, the humor that was always characteristic of Prokofiev did not disappear. In the fairy tale (for the reader and the symphony orchestra), addressed to the youngest listeners, a lot of interesting information is given in a humorous form. Each character is characterized by some kind of instrument. The result was a kind of guide to the orchestra and at the same time cheerful, funny music. - one of the works in which the composer achieved “new simplicity,” as he himself called it, that is, such a manner of presenting thoughts that easily reaches the listener without reducing or impoverishing the thought itself.

The pinnacle of Prokofiev's work is his opera War and Peace. The plot of L. Tolstoy’s great work, recreating the heroic pages of Russian history, was perceived in an unusually poignant and modern way during the years of the Patriotic War (and it was then that the opera was created).

This work combines the best, most typical features of his work. Prokofiev is here both a master of a characteristic intonation portrait, and a monumentalist who freely composes mass folk scenes, and, finally, a lyricist who created an unusually poetic and feminine image of Natasha.

Prokofiev once compared creativity to shooting at moving targets: “Only by taking aim ahead, at tomorrow, will you not be left behind, at the level of yesterday’s requirements.”

And all his life he took “an eye forward”, and, probably, that is why all his works - both written in the years of creative growth and in the years of his last serious illness - have remained with us and continue to bring joy to listeners.

Major works:

Operas:

"The Gambler" (1916)
"The Love for Three Oranges" (1919).
"Fire Angel" (1927),
"Semyon Kotko" (1939)
"Betrothal in a Monastery" (1940)
"War and Peace" (1943)
"The Tale of a Real Man" (1948)

Ballets:

“The Tale of a Jester Who Tricked Seven Jesters” (1915)
"Steel Leap" (1925)
"Prodigal Son" (1928)
"Romeo and Juliet" (1936)
"Cinderella" (1944)
"The Tale of the Stone Flower" (1950)