2023-04-22 02:30:35
34 minutes ago
Boris Shtokolov
Boris Shtokolov can be safely called the main monogamist of the domestic opera scene. With his adored Nadezhda, he had been married for more than 40 years and said: “If it were not for Nadia, there would be no me.” Her death was a great grief for the artist, with which he coped only thanks to Nina Sergeevna, an old friend of his wife, who became his second wife.
Nadezhda Petrovna died in Boris’s arms.
– During the day, Nadia watered the flowers in the big room where I rehearse. Nadenka suddenly cried out softly: “Borenka! ..” – and began to fall. I managed to pick her up and carried her to the sofa in my arms, – Shtokolov recalled. I’m crying and don’t know what to do. I call her: “Nadya! Nadia!” And she no longer reacts, she lost consciousness. Then I remembered: we have a phone. I called an ambulance, but Nadia, my dear Nadenka, might not be saved … For a long time I might not believe that she was not with me.
Pavel Esser, who for many years worked as a theater administrator and impresario for many famous artists, and then became a priest and emigrated to Germany, believed that Nadezhda Petrovna had dissolved in her husband in vain and abandoned her singing career. For Shtokolov was, in his words, an inveterate egoist:
– Of course, they were connected by great love, but Nadezhda Petrovna fiddled with Boris Timofeevich at home, like with a small child. And always cooled his ardent, often inconsistent nature. I remember when Viktor Reznikov died (the 39-year-old author of Dinosaurs died two days following an accident that happened right in front of his mother. – O. E.), I told Boris Timofeevich and Nadezhda Petrovna regarding the tragedy. Shtokolov reacted very rudely: “So he needs it!” The wife shamed: “Borenka, what are you talking regarding?” The next day, Boris Timofeevich was shaken by a microstroke. I remember him in intensive care. I remember the speaker: “Then the whole world conquered, tried to surprise everyone, but all my aspirations are on this bed, and I don’t need anything else.”
Journey for happiness
Nina Sergeevna, who had been a friend of his first wife for a quarter of a century, gave herself entirely to her husband. They got married with Shtokolov three years following the death of Nadezhda Petrovna. Happiness lasted three years – in 2005, the 74-year-old singer died of peritonitis. Nina Sergeevna sighed as she talked to journalist Elena Livsi:
– It seems to me that he is regarding to come, that he will open the door … I am walking through the market, and some kind of ulterior thought: this is what he loves … We led a very correct way of life. Meals – vegetables, steamed fish (he did not take meat), a lot of fresh salads. He was in great shape: he rode a bike, he drove a car, he swam. It would seem to live and live. He himself said: I will live to be a hundred years old. When he left for the operation that day, already on a gurney he said: “You do everything without me the same way as with me.” The doctor was surprised: “Are you saying goodbye?” And I say: “No, what are you! He will return, and we will live as before.
You know, I never looked at Boris as a man when we were friends with Nadia. For me, he existed like God. Even when Nadia passed away, it never occurred to me that we would find each other. Borya was inaccessible.
I came to the house, helped to sort out the notes … And somehow it came by itself.
One day he says: “Let’s go to Anapa.” We took tickets, sat next to each other on the plane, he took my hand – the first time he took my hand! – and said: “Maybe we are going for our happiness?” And that’s where our music started.
We were very in tune. He only thinks, and I speak, and vice versa, I think, and he expresses a thought. I think it was not without Nadina’s will that everything happened. She probably sent me to him – she knew that he alone would not be able to cope at all.
Long-suffering labor
A bronze monument with a piano made of black granite and gold carved words from the song “Burn, burn, my star …” – Shtokolov’s visiting card – on the grave of Boris Timofeevich on Literatorskie Mostki in St. Petersburg appeared three years following the death of the singer. And work on it began already in 1993.
Boris’ friend, the sculptor Mikhail Anikushin, started it. It was he who decided that the figure would be in real height – all 185 cm. The bass liked the master’s idea. But in 1997 Anikushin died. His wife Maria Litovchenko continued. In 2003, she died, and the work was not completed. The monument was completed following Shtokolov’s death by Anikushin’s student, the sculptor Nikolai Antsiferov.
Photo source: Youtube, Olga Emelyanova, Nikolai Akimov/TASS
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