People's Artist of the USSR Edita Piekha has been pleasing fans with her songs for more than half a century. We talk about the most interesting facts from her biography.
1
Edita Pieha is Polish by birth, but was born in the northern part of France - two hundred kilometers from Paris. She was only two years old when the Second World War began and France was occupied by the Nazis. Edita's father died when the girl was 4 years old.
2
Edita had an older brother who, after the death of his father, went to work in the mine to feed his mother and little sister. But having barely worked there for three years, he died of tuberculosis.
In order to somehow survive, Piekha's mother married a "simple village man" who beat the girl regularly and did not see anything wrong with it, because he was raised like that in childhood. His stepfather was also a Pole, and when the war ended, he took his family from France to Poland. Together with her mother and younger brother, Edita moved to the mining town of Boguszów.
3
After the seventh grade, the girl entered the Pedagogical Lyceum, graduated with honors and won the competition for the right to go to study in the USSR. So she ended up in Leningrad.
4
Here Piekha began to sing in the choir of the Polish community, where she was noticed by a student of the conducting and choral department of the Leningrad Philharmonic Alexander Bronevitsky. He took her as a soloist in his ensemble, which would soon be called "Friendship", and later became not only the singer's mentor, but also her husband.
5
On New Year's Eve from 1955 to 1956, Edita performed with an ensemble at the Leningrad Conservatory with the song "Red Bus" in Polish. The very first performance was a triumph - Edita was called four times to sing an encore, and literally the next day all of Leningrad knew about her.
6
In 1970, Veniamin Dorman's film "The Fate of a Resident" was released, in which Piekha played the role of a German intelligence officer.
7
One of the main hitmakers of the singer was the composer Oscar Feltsman. It was Piekha who became the first performer of his lyrical song "White Light", but the popular hit "I See Nothing" was first performed by singer Veronika Kruglova, although now everyone remembers the song only performed by Edita Piekha.
8
In 1965, being a famous Soviet singer, Piekha came on tour to France and heard a song whose melody seemed familiar to her from childhood. Returning to the Union, Edita sang this melody to the famous poet Robert Rozhdestvensky and asked him to write a Russian text for it. So the ballad "City of Childhood" was born.
9
Piekha's visiting card - the song "Neighbour" was written at the end of 1965 for one of the student "skitters". It was written not by a professional composer, but by an architect-engineer, and was first performed by Mikhail Butman. His son - the famous saxophonist Igor Butman - later recalled that the song quickly became a hit among students. The author Boris Potemkin once offered Bronevitsky his song.
Later, the song "Neighbour" became a hit, and Boris Potemkin bought himself a three-room cooperative apartment and a car "Zaporozhets" with deductions.
10
Bronevitsky was insanely jealous of Edita. They lived more together for more than twenty years, but broke up. The second husband of the singer was KGB Colonel Gennady Shestakov, with whom she lived for seven years. The third husband of the singer is Vladimir Polyakov, an employee of the analytical center of the presidential administration of Russia. With him, the singer lived under the same roof for eleven years.