Anastasia Vyaltseva

Anastasia Vyaltseva
A.D. Vyaltseva in the 1900s
Background information
Birth name	Anastasia Vyaltseva
Born	February 19 [O.S. March 1] 1871 Trubchevsk, Russian Empire
Died	18 February 1913(1913-02-18) (aged 41) Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Occupation(s)	Opera singer (mezzo-soprano)
Years active	1893-1812

Anastasia Dmitrievna Vyaltseva (Анастаси′я Дми′триевна Вя′льцева, 1871-1913) was a renowned Russian mezzo-soprano, specializing in Gypsy art songs. Enjoying the cult following and supported by the popular press (which called her The Incomparable, Nesravnennaya), she toured regularly and was engaged in numerous operettas (Saffi in The Gypsy Baron by Johann Strauss, Perichole in La Perichole and Helene in Offenbach's La belle Helene), as well as operas, appearing in the Mariyinsky Theatre, as Carmen (Carmen by Georges Bizet), Amneris (Aida by Giuseppe Verdi, Dalila (Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns). The biggest star of the Russian popular music scene of the 1900s, Vyaltseva had more than 300 songs to her repertoire, one of the best loved being "I Fall In and Out of Love at Will".

Anastasia Vyaltseva was born on 1 March 1871, in Altukhovo sloboda near Trubchevsk (formerly of the Oryol Governorate, now the Navlinsky region of Bryansk Governorate). Her mother Maria Tikhonovna was a local peasant woman. Her father Dmitry Vyaltsev, born in Svyazye village (in Trubchevsk, according to other sources), was a forester servant supervising some of the estates of Count Orlovsky. Rumour had it she was an illegitimate child of Count Orlovsky estate's manager, named Alexey. The latter arranged Maria's marriage to Dmitry Vyaltsev, a forester, who agreed to give her children his surname and paternal (middle) name.

After Dmitry's death (he was killed by a falling tree) Maria Tikhonovna with Nastya and two sons, Yakov and Ananiy, settled in her elderly parents' small wooden hut at the outskirts of Altukhovo. Several years later she took her three children to Kiev where she worked as laundress. In Kiev, eight-year-old Anastasia joined a dressmaker's saloon. The clientele, mostly choirgirls from the Kiev theatres, soon discovered the girl had a voice.