Nikolai Nikolaevich Dobronravov is widely known as a popular songwriter. But not everyone knows him as an actor or author of theatrical plays. And the fact that during his long creative biography he published a lot of poetry collections is also not known to everyone. Apparently, his literary gift really really revealed itself in the song genre.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Dobronravov was born in 1928 in Leningrad. From an early age, his grandmother instilled in him a love for art, and a school teacher for literature. Still young Kolya showed great interest in this. It is said that he once learned by heart Griboyedov's Woe from Wit. The grandmother was so scared by this event that she took her grandson to a psychiatrist, who, however, did not find any mental abnormalities in him.
The beginning of the creative path
After graduating from school with a gold medal, Dobronravov could not immediately decide on the choice of his future profession. To a degree he wanted to both engage in literary creation and teach literature at school. This is probably why he could not immediately make a choice and entered the theater school-studio of the Moscow Art Theater. True, after graduating from it, he continued his studies at the philological faculty of the pedagogical institute.
The not too long artistic biography of the future famous songwriter is entirely connected with the Moscow Theater of the Young Spectator, where he showed himself as a very gifted actor
At the same time, he starred in two feature films: "Sports Honor" and "The Return of Vasily Bortnikov." In collaboration with his friend and theatrical colleague Sergei Grebennikov, he writes theater plays, the opera Ivan Shadrin and children's stories.
The glory of the songwriter
And Nikolai Dobronravov began to sing poetry after meeting his future wife, already then a famous young composer Alexandra Pakhmutova. They first met in the early sixties on the radio, while recording a children's radio show. Dobronravov was then offered to compose poetry for a children's song. Well, the music to his words was written by Pakhmutova. This is how their first joint creative debut took place.
A couple of years later, the creative tandem of Pakhmutov - Dobronravov knew the entire Soviet Union. Mainly, thanks to the creation of many songs of patriotic Soviet themes about the Motherland, Lenin, the party and the Komsomol. Their work instantly fills the radio and television air. Their songs are performed at concerts of the highest official level performed by the most famous pop performers. Iosif Kobzon, Edita Piekha, Lev Leshchenko, Valentina Tolkunova and many other Soviet pop stars of those years consider it an honor to perform songs of the famous author's duet.
But their work cannot be called official. It is always felt that both the music and the words of their songs are written sincerely, from the heart.
Nikolai Nikolaevich, a subtle lyricist by nature, writes many poems for lyric songs. Hardly anyone in the USSR then did not know his words to such hits of the Soviet stage as "Belorussia", "Belovezhskaya Pushcha", "Rowan Branch" …
Without thinking about it, Nikolai Dobronravov does not like being called a songwriter. He believes that a real poet can only be a poet without any additional definitions.
