Alexander Vertinsky

Alexander Nikolayevich Vertinsky , – May 21, 1957) was a Russian and Soviet artist, poet, singer, composer, cabaret artist and actor who exerted seminal influence on the Russian tradition of artistic singing. Early years Alexander Vertinsky and his elder sister Nadezhda were born in Kiev (now Kyiv, Ukraine) out of wedlock: their parents couldn't marry since his father's first wife ("Varvara, an elderly, evil and unattractive woman") refused a divorce, so he had to adopt his own children. Both parents belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. His father Nikolai Petrovich Vertinsky (1845—1894) came from a railwayman's family. He was a well-known lawyer – according to Alexander, especially popular among poor people, because he defended them for free and even helped financially, — and an occasional journalist (he published feuilletons under a pen name Graf Niver). While Alexander considered himself Russian in general, he assumed that he had some Polish blood too: "I never met people with my surname in Russia, but in Poland it is met more or less often... one of my great-grandfathers was probably a Pole". He also recognised that he had some Ukrainian ancestry and Ukrainian as one of his native languages. In his letters Vertinsky recalled a time when he was working at Dovzhenko Film Studios and Ukrainian actress Natalia Uzhviy was surprised to hear his Ukrainian accent. Alexander's mother Eugenia Stepanovna Skolatskaya came from a noble family, but the parents rejected her after she had given birth to illegitimate children. She died when Alexander was only three years old from sepsis after an unsuccessful surgery, and in two years his father also died from tuberculosis. As Alexander described it, Nikolai Vertinsky couldn't accept his wife's death, spent a lot of time at the cemetery, and at one point was found unconscious near her tomb, which led to his illness and quick death.