Childhood and youth
Yuri was born in Tyumen on September 9, 1930. His mother had a great influence on the development of the musically gifted boy’s abilities. Vera Fedorovna sang well, was interested in music and loved it very much. As a child, Yuri liked to memorize songs and romances from gramophone records. His favorite performers were Sergei Lemeshev, Tamara Tsereteli, Varya Panina and Lyalya Chernaya.
Yuri Gulyaev
The boy's first performance in front of the public took place at a school party, when he performed Lensky's aria, learned from the record. It was an incredible success with a storm of thunderous applause. Zinaida Aleksandrovna Naumova, Yuri’s class teacher, predicted a great future for him and insisted that he study music seriously.
He achieved a lot: he studied at general education and music schools, participated in amateur performances, and worked as an accompanist.
Yuri Gulyaev in his youth
I didn’t think about a musical career, considering these activities a pleasant hobby. Since childhood, he dreams of becoming a doctor, so after school he enters the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute. While studying at the institute, he participates in amateur performances. Soon the medical student realizes the mistake and is transferred to the conservatory. M. Mussorgsky. In 1954, he completed his studies at the vocal department in the singing class of F. I. Obraztsovskaya.
Childhood and youth
The young composer spent his childhood in Tomsk, Yura’s mother sang beautifully, studied music and instilled in her son a love of art. Developing the boy's abilities, he was sent to a school with a musical bias, where he learned to play the button accordion. From early childhood, the guy loved to sing, listened to records every day, memorized the lyrics and tried to imitate his favorite artists. After graduating from school, Yura entered medical school (1947), sang in amateur performances.
Yuri Gulyaev in his youth
The young man was already beginning to understand that he had chosen the wrong profession and transferred to the conservatory in the vocal department, from which he graduated in fifty-four. After the conservatory, the young singer was invited to Ukraine in Donetsk (then Stalino). The Opera and Ballet Theater has found a gifted performer. The audience applauded after each performance; arias from “The Barber of Seville” and “La Traviata” were remembered by the audience for a long time.
Music
After graduating from the conservatory, Yuri Gulyaev sang for a year at the Sverdlovsk Opera House. In 1955, he was invited to Ukraine to the city of Stalino (Donetsk), where he became a soloist at the Opera and Ballet Theater. The appearance of Yuri Gulyaev on the international stage was also marked by success. In 1959 in Vienna, at the World Festival of Youth and Students, the singer won first prize.
Singer Yuri Gulyaev
A year later, Yuri was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR. This event was preceded by a curious incident. In 1960, during the Ten Days of Ukrainian Art in Moscow, a delegation of artists from Ukraine was taken to a banquet hosted by Nikita Khrushchev. At the event there were high government officials, among whom were Kliment Voroshilov, Semyon Budyonny, Leonid Brezhnev.
At the height of the fun, the artists began to perform songs, but since there was no piano, the singing sounded without accompaniment. The search for an accompanist was unsuccessful: the accordion player who arrived could not play by ear. Then Yuri Gulyaev, at the request of the Secretary of the Central Committee of Ukraine Andrey Skaba, took the instrument in his hands and began to play along with everyone who wanted to sing. Everyone was satisfied.
Yuri Gulyaev - “I wish you”
From 1961 to 1975 he worked at the Theater. T. Shevchenko in Kyiv. Here Yuri Gulyaev sang the entire baritone repertoire. He performed the parts of Morales from Carmen, Yeletsky from The Queen of Spades, Valentin from Faust, Papageno from The Magic Flute.
In 1971 he performed a number of roles at the Bolshoi Theater, and in 1975 he became a soloist of this theater. Yuri Gulyaev decided to move to the capital of the USSR with his family after a devastating review in “Evening Kyiv” of the opera production “Eugene Onegin”, in which he participated. An equally significant reason for the move was his son’s illness: in Moscow, the boy was promised full treatment and rehabilitation.
Yuri Gulyaev - “At the Nameless Height”
Yuri Gulyaev failed to gain a foothold in Moscow. At that time, a large troupe had gathered at the Bolshoi Theater, in which the best performers waited for several years to appear on stage. The visiting singer was no exception. At this moment, Yuri turns his attention to the pop song. Tours and recordings on the All-Union Radio begin, which made Yuri Gulyaev the favorite of the whole country.
At his concerts, opera arias, romances, folk songs, as well as pop hits were performed. At the end of the 1960s, a series of songs dedicated to space was published. Yuri Gulyaev, his magnificent voice and the repertoire he performed were known and loved even in the most remote corners of our country. In terms of the strength of his talent and the beauty of his voice, Yuri Gulyaev was often compared to Muslim Magomayev, which did not interfere with the friendship of the two singers.
Muslim Magomaev, Innokenty Smoktunovsky and Yuri Gulyaev
The singer's lyrical baritone harmoniously matched his appearance. Powerful, tall, with masculine features, radiant, beautifully colored eyes and a charming smile, he was a favorite of the public and popular with women. Letters from fans came to the singer in bags, his photos were reproduced in Soviet magazines and newspapers. Each concert of Yuri Gulyaev ended with works performed as an encore - the songs “Do you know what kind of guy he was” by Alexandra Pakhmutova and “Romantics”, “Brigantine” by Igor Shamo.
Successful, talented, he tours a lot throughout the country and abroad. He performs in socialist countries, the USA, France, Canada, Belgium, Japan and Cuba. In 1964, his voice was heard on the stage of the Olympia concert hall in Paris. The audiences of the best theaters in the world applaud him, and the French call the singer “young Chaliapin.”
Yuri Gulyaev with cosmonauts
In addition to his career as a singer, he tries himself as an actor, acts in films, his filmography includes two films. In 1961, Gulyaev appears in “Ukrainian Rhapsody”, in 1969 - in the film “New Year’s Abduction”. He also gets roles in a number of musical films.
Musical achievements
At music school, Yuri was a C student and was even on the verge of expulsion. However, in the last year of study, the teachers still managed to hear his true voice, which millions later loved.
When the singer got a job at the Sverdlovsk Opera and Drama Theater, he was immediately given leading roles. During the first year he performed Figaro in The Barber of Seville, Valentin in Faust and Yeletsky in The Queen of Spades. But Gulyaev’s greatest popularity came in 1959, after winning the World Youth Festival held in Vienna. Here he managed to beat all his competitors and win the gold medal. The event was attended by Bolshoi Theater soloist Valeria Barsova, who, hearing the voice of the young talent, immediately said that he would become famous throughout the country.
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Personal life
Yuri Alexandrovich met his future wife in 1956. Larisa Mikhailovna was a journalist, editor and teacher. The young people got married four years after they first met. Despite the crowds of fans who loved the singer “to tears” (according to Alexandra Pakhmutova), Yuri remained faithful to his wife and was satisfied with his current personal life.
Yuri Gulyaev with his wife and son
The son, who was named Yuri in honor of his father, was born in 1964. The boy was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, but his parents made every effort to cure the child, and they succeeded. Due to difficulties in raising their first child, Yuri and Larisa did not dare to have more children. Yuri Gulyaev Jr. subsequently became a candidate of philosophical sciences and taught at Moscow State University.
Yuri Gulyaev with his wife and son
Being a world-class singer, Yuri Gulyaev was distinguished by rare “skill.” Everything worked in the artist’s hands: he repaired record players, loved carpentry, understood the workings of a car, and drove a car himself. Yuri Gulyaev was an expert in the game of chess, often sitting at the piano, performing pieces of his own composition. From literature, I preferred the works of Anton Chekhov and Sergei Yesenin.
Death
In the late 70s, Yuri began to have health problems. Contrary to popular belief, which attributed the artist to alcohol abuse, his condition was undermined by a busy tour schedule, his son’s illness and the lack of full realization on the opera stage. After pneumonia, he develops bronchial asthma. Gulyaev spends the rest of his life more in hospitals than at home.
Yuri Gulyaev
The star's biography ended too early. The singer died on April 23, 1986. The cause of death was a heart attack that happened to him in the car while it was parked at the garage. In the last minutes of his life, the singer thought that an asthmatic attack had begun, and even took out an inhaler to carry out the usual procedure, but it turned out that his heart could not stand it. Death came instantly. The grave of Yuri Gulyaev is located at the Vagankovskoye cemetery in Moscow.
Grave of Yuri Gulyaev
After the singer's untimely death, there were no official studio opera recordings left. Gulyaev’s discography, printed materials, and interviews with the master were collected piece by piece by his widow and son with the participation of sponsors and the Russian Classics Foundation named after him. The documentary film “Unfinished Song” is dedicated to the artist. Yuri Gulyaev."
Glory far ahead
Yuri Gulyaev was so talented that his invaluable contribution to the development of art was rewarded during his lifetime. In 1960, the singer was awarded the title of Honored Artist of Ukraine, after which he received an offer to work at the Kiev Opera and Ballet Theater named after Taras Shevchenko, which was considered the main theater in the country.
Once the singer attended an official reception, which was attended by Nikita Khrushchev himself. Seeing the artist, the president approached him and said that he always listens to his songs when he goes to work or returns home. This was the highest praise one could hope for. No one had been awarded such an honor at that time.
In addition, streets in Donetsk and Tyumen, a concert hall and a philharmonic in his hometown, and a small planet 6783 were named after Yuri Gulyaev. Also in Donetsk, a museum was opened dedicated to the life and work of the people’s artist, which still operates today.
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Discography
- 1967 - “Yuri Gulyaev sings the songs of Alexandra Pakhmutova”
- 1970-1971 - “Gagarin’s Constellation”
- 1990 — Double gramophone record “I wish you” Yuri Gulyaev
- 1994 - “He loved you”
- 1995 - “Oh, Nastasya”
- 1995 — “Romances by S. V. Rachmaninov, M. I. Glinka”
- 1995 — “Arias from Operas”
- 1995 — “Our military youth”
- 1996 - “Romances by P. I. Tchaikovsky, A. P. Borodin, A. S. Dargomyzhsky, A. G. Rubinstein, A. N. Rimsky-Korsakov”
- 1996 — “I marvel at the sky”
- 1996 - “I wish you”
- 2005 - “Yuri Gulyaev. Favorites. To the 75th anniversary of his birth"
