Elmira Sergeevna Zherzdeva is a Russian singer, performer of romances, arias, folk and pop songs. Having worked all her life on the stage of the Soviet stage, she did not gain much popularity. However, she left her mark in Russian art: it is in her voice that the Princess sings in the cartoon "The Bremen Town Musicians", beloved by children and adults.
Biography and career
Elmira Zherzdeva (correctly pronounce the surname with an accent on the first syllable) was born on March 6, 1936, in the mining village of Bolokhovo (Tula region, Kireevsky district). There were no professional musicians in the family, but everyone loved music. Elmira's father played the guitar, accordion and piano, choosing songs and romances by ear. My daughter also showed musical abilities: at first she sang along with her father, then, already at school, she performed at concerts and participated in performances. Gradually, the aspiring singer developed a very extensive repertoire: romances, arias from operas, popular pop songs - and she learned all this, not owning musical notation, by ear.
When Elmira was 15 years old, her parents had the opportunity to show their daughter to the famous singer, People's Artist of the USSR Nadezhda Andreevna Obukhova, who for 25 years was a soloist of the Bolshoi Theater, and then took up solo concert activities. Obukhova highly appreciated the talent of Elmira Zherzdeva and advised her to pursue professional music education. As a result, the girl became a student at the Music School at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory (vocal department). The future composer Gennady Gladkov studied with Elmira on the same course, who a few years later invited her to voice the Princess in the cartoon "The Bremen Town Musicians".
After graduating from college, Elmira continued to study vocals under the guidance of teacher and accompanist Vladimir Yakovlevich Gladstein. And then the creative career of the young singer began. In 1958, Zherzdeva joined the All-Union Radio Opera Choir, and later became the soloist of the Mosconcert. In 1962, she performed at the II All-Russian Contest of Variety Artists, went to the final, where she scored an equal number of points along with Eduard Khil, but the jury chose the Leningrad singer as the winner.
While working at the Mosconcert, Zherzdeva prepared large and varied concert programs and went on tour with them throughout the Soviet Union and abroad. So, in 1967 she performed with great success at the World Exhibition "EXPO-67" in the Canadian city of Montreal, in which 62 countries participated and more than 50 million people visited; it was attended by such world celebrities as the English Queen Elizabeth II, Lyndon Johnson - the President of the United States, Charles de Gaulle - the President of France, Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy, Marlene Dietrich and many others. Obviously, the level of the event was global. And in 1970 Elmira Zherzdeva was again sent to the EXPO-70 World Exhibition in Osaka, Japan, where she was also applauded by people from all over the world. With solo concert programs, the singer also toured the cities of Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Finland, starred there for television as a representative of the USSR delegation. Elmira Zherzdeva recorded several records of old romances, pop and Russian folk songs, accompanied by a piano or folk orchestras under the direction of N. Kalinin and N. Nekrasov.
An important milestone in Zherzdeva's biography was her work on television: in 1969 and 1973 she voiced the Princess in the cartoons "The Bremen Town Musicians" and "In the Footsteps of the Bremen Town Musicians", and in 1971 she performed an aria for the film "Property of the Republic". Zherzdeva communicated and even made friends with many prominent Soviet pop figures - Maria Mironova, Joseph Kobzon, Lyudmila Gurchenko, Muslim Magomayev, Lyudmila Zykina, worked in collaboration with famous accompanists David Ashkenazi, Boris Mandrus and others. However, according to the singer herself, she personally did not achieve great popularity due to her soft and not penetrative nature: somewhere more stubborn, persistent and influential competitors “crossed the road” for her, and somewhere she was simply unlucky.
In 1992 Elmira Zherzdeva was awarded the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR. And in 2008, her last performance took place - in a concert program dedicated to the memory of concertmaster David Ashkenazi, who died in 1997 and with whom Zherzdeva performed for many years. Today Elmira Sergeevna is a Moscow pensioner who anxiously keeps in her memory the events of her creative life.
Creation
Singer Elmira Zherzdeva presented her clear and sonorous voice to the Princess from two famous Soviet cartoons about the Bremen Town Musicians. She has many interesting memories associated with this work. One late evening, when Elmira was about to go to bed, her longtime friend from the Music School, composer Gennady Gladkov, called her and asked to help him out: he was given a night shift at the recording studio, and it was necessary to urgently make a "voice acting" for the cartoon. Gladkov said: "There is not much to sing there, you chirp quickly and go home." A car was sent for the singer, and soon Zherzdeva was already recording in the studio with Oleg Anofriev. Then Elmira Sergeevna could not even imagine that this cartoon would become so popular, and that a fun night adventure would become one of the most important in her life.
And four years later she again recorded the Princess, but due to the conflict between Oleg Anofriev and Gennady Gladkov and Yuri Entin, now she sang in tandem with Muslim Magomayev. This singer was then at the peak of fame, and crowds of fans literally hunted him. Because of this, they did not even want to let Zherzdev into the studio, mistaking Magomayev for one of the fans, but then everything was safely resolved. The second cartoon also won the great love of children and adults in the USSR and abroad.
Personal life
Elmira Zherzdeva met her husband, accordion player Vladimir Panov, in 1972 at a recording studio during the preparation of a gramophone record. Young people met for two years, and then got married. And in 1976, forty-year-old Elmira Zherzdeva gave birth to her only daughter Olga. The couple lived in a happy marriage for forty years until Panov's death. Daughter Olga gave her parents a grandson Sergei (1999) and granddaughter Tatiana (2004).
