Alexander Nikolaevich
Vertinsky
1889-1957
Alexander Nikolaevich Vertinsky was a Russian and Soviet popular artist, film actor, composer, poet, singer and a pop icon of the first half of the 20th century and winner of the Stalin Prize of the II degree (1951). At an early age, he was orphaned and raised by relatives. He published poetry in the Kiev editions of “Kievskaya Nedelya” and “Lukomorye”, where B. Livshits and A. Remizov also published their works. As a high school student, Vertinsky became interested in theatre, playing on the amateur stage and working as an extra at the Solovtsov Theatre in Kiev. He attempted to join the theatre troupe, but was unsuccessful. The Moscow Art Theatre was unsuccessful due to the actor’s speech defect, as he had a gibberish speech, although this did not stop him from acting in silent films. The actor was acquainted with V.V. Mayakovsky and considered himself a futurist. He performed at the Café of Poets and volunteered for the front in 1914. After being wounded, he returned to Moscow in 1915 and found his niche in the genre of “ariettes” – game songs, which he performed in costumes and makeup as Pierrot on stage in cabarets and theatres. He also performed poems by famous Russian poets such as A. Blok, I. Annensky, F. Sologub, A. Akhmatova and N. Gumilev. His mastery of recitation allowed him to preserve the poetic essence of the verses against the background of music. Vertinsky’s intimate songs made the high poetry of the Silver Age more accessible to the public, and his literary works continued the traditions of Russian modernism with its characteristic decadent themes. For his contemporaries, the mystery of his hypnotic influence on both mass audiences and the elite remained unexplained. In 1917, Vertinsky wrote a poem called “What I Have to Say”, in response to the death of cadets, which led to him being summoned to the Cheka. Following this, he decided to leave Russia and toured in the southern part of the country before emigrating in 1919. Vertinsky lived in Poland and Paris, touring Europe and the United States, before moving to Shanghai in 1935. After years of attempting to obtain a Soviet visa, in 1943 he finally received permission to return to the USSR, where he lived in Moscow and actively toured the country, starring in films. In 1962, his memoir “A Quarter Century Without a Homeland” was published in a Moscow magazine. His poems and songs were published in the collection “Songs and Poems”, which was published in Paris in 1938.
Address: Moscow, Tverskaya St., 12, building 2
