“A modest blue handkerchief fell from lowered shoulders ...” - this song was known and loved by all citizens of the large country of the USSR. This composition, performed by the famous singer Claudia Shulzhenko, has forever entered the golden fund of the Soviet stage. Claudia Ivanovna became a People's Artist. And it all started with family performances and concerts, in a family where everyone was a bit of an artist.
Childhood of Claudia Shulzhenko
Claudia was born on March 11 (24), 1906 in the family of an accountant of the Main Directorate of the Railway, Ivan Ivanovich Shulzhenko. The family had a brother and sister - Kolya and Klava. Their mother was engaged in their upbringing, and their father instilled a love of art.
Despite the very boring and seemingly prosaic profession associated with accounts and numbers, the father of the family was very musical. He played many instruments, sang beautifully, had acting talent.
In those days, family performances were in vogue. Very often, neighbors came to the cozy Kharkov courtyard to watch the performance, in which the large Shulzhenko family took part.
Ivan played and sang, and the children put on small skits, in which Klava stood out for her diligence. “Artist!” People laughed, and Claudia already dreamed of a professional career.
In the gymnasium, she enthusiastically studied literature, read the classics, and, trying on the images of heroines, saw herself on the theater stage. With pleasure I went to all the performances of the Kharkov Drama Theater and knew all the roles by heart. And her parents saw her as a singer, insisting on studying at the conservatory.
Claudia took vocal lessons from Conservatory professor Nikita Chemizov. But, as the teacher admitted, there was practically nothing to teach Klava. Her crystal voice was so good and sounded great.
Claudia Shulzhenko: The beginning of a career
In 1921, 15-year-old Claudia Shulzhenko finally made up her mind. She took a friend with her for courage and came to audition at the Kharkov Drama Theater.
Having played a small sketch and sang a few songs to the accompaniment of Isaac Dunayevsky (in the future - a famous composer), Klava won the heart of director Nikolai Sinelnikov and was enrolled in the theater troupe. True, she was entrusted with playing only episodic roles. But she played them very convincingly. And even better, she succeeded in the song parts that she sang in the choir and operetta.
“You must sing a song as if you were playing a one-man show, where you play all the roles alone,” Sinelnikov taught her. And Claudia put her talent as an actress into every song. This is how the style of performance, inherent only to Shulzhenko, appeared - a song-performance, a song-monologue.
At the age of 17, the young actress performed for the first time in the play "Execution" the romance "Stars in the Sky" and captivated the audience with the simplicity and sincerity of her singing.
The first confession of Claudia Shulzhenko
In 1924, the opera diva Lydia Lipkovskaya came to Kharkiv on tour. Claudia, plucking up courage, came to her hotel with a request to audition. Surprisingly, the opera singer listened. And, admiring the data of the young singer, she advised me to slightly change the repertoire, add lyrical songs to it, which would more fully reveal Shulzhenko's talent.
And after a while there was a fateful meeting between the singer and its author. Composer Pavel German, who, after one of the performances, met Claudia and invited her to sing his songs. So Shulzhenko's repertoire was replenished with later famous compositions: "Bricks", "I do not regret", "Mine No. 3" and "Note".
Composer Meitus, in collaboration with actor Breitingam, wrote several hits for the singer: "The Cigarette Girl and the Sailor", "Red Poppy", "On the Sled", which were included in Shulzhenko's repertoire, with which she conquered Moscow.
Career of the singer Claudia Shulzhenko
The debut of the 22-year-old singer on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater, and a year later - on the stage of the Moscow Music Hall, was a success. Her songs were enthusiastically received by the public. When the songs were performed, the hall stood up, and there was a storm of applause at the last notes. Then there was work at the Leningrad Music Hall, she played in performances, sang songs, the music for which was written by the legendary Dmitry Shostakovich.
In the early 1930s, the artist participated in the jazz orchestra of Skomorovsky, and then was banned from performing. The motivation was simple - the lyrics in the country of socialism were superfluous, it was necessary to sing about labor exploits.
Shulzhenko did the right thing - she did not go into the shadows, did not let her fans forget herself. She simply changed her style - her repertoire now included folk songs. In each of these compositions, Shulzhenko was a real, sincere, melodramatic, that Claudia, whom the people infinitely loved. Queues lined up behind the records.
Two years before the war, Shulzhenko became the laureate of the contest of pop artists, her photograph adorned the covers of magazines. And postcards with her face hung in the rooms of fans next to family photos, a jazz band was created especially for her. And then the war began.
Claudia Shulzhenko during the war years
The war found Claudia on tour in Yerevan. Without hesitation, she and her husband and the orchestra joined the ranks of the Soviet army, went to the front with concerts.
Shulzhenko's front-line orchestra gave hundreds of concerts under shelling. Once, at the beginning of 1942, after such a concert, war correspondent Maksimov showed Klavdiya Ivanovna his poems, a new text for the Blue Handkerchief waltz.
The words touched to the core. And Claudia sang this waltz so soulfully that the song spread instantly on all fronts. She was copied in notebooks and on sheets of paper, she was sung in moments of rare rest in the war, she sounded like an anthem in the rear. Perhaps there was no more popular song of that time.
Until the end of the war, the orchestra continued to perform both at the front and in the rear. And immediately after the victory, she began a solo post-war career.
Triumph
After the war, Klavdia Shulzhenko remained the favorite singer of millions for many years. Songs performed by her made people sincerely smile, be sad and cry. Her voice still lives, sounds from TV screens, on the air of radio channels. In 1971, the favorite of the people became the People's Artist of the USSR. The artist died after a long illness in the summer of 1984.
