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Marina Tregubovich: <br>“I didn’t know how to sing”

23.01.2017

Marina Tregubovich:
“I didn’t know how to sing”

Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Un ballo in maschera is being staged on 3 February in honour of Marina Tregubovich’s 50th birthday. With her rich and sensuous soprano voice, Marina will sing the part of Amelia. Shortly before her special day, Marina told us about her unusual entry into the world of opera, and about the most memorable moments of her stage career.

“Young lady, would you like to be in the movies?”

I began acting in films at the age of six. My first film was Old Walls, starring Lyudmila Gurchenko and Armen Dzhigarkhanyan. I sang for the first time in that film. I sang the song I’ve Lost My Ring for the part where Gurchenko and Dzhigarkhanyan are on the train. I didn’t enjoy filming that part at all. I was always being chivvied, I wasn’t allowed to sleep, everything took so long, and the train kept lurching this way and that. My father made that film; he was the director. He told me that it’s wrong to use a lot of gestures in film, that I shouldn’t make faces. When I was small, nothing could hold me back; I wasn’t afraid of anyone and I wasn’t shy. In film, that was a good thing.

Some time later, Lenfilm [a major film studio in the city] held an audition for parts in a children’s film called Young Lady, Would You Like to Be in the Movies? My father asked whether I wanted to try for it, though he warned me straight off that he wouldn’t help. My mother and I went to the audition, and I got the part. After that, the director Adolf Bergunker put me in his film, Grandmother’s Grandson. And then my father used me in his film Want to Leave? Leave! starring the great actor Viktor Pavlov and Lyudmila Gurchenko. With five films under my belt, I decided I would be an actress — a film actress. I didn’t, at the beginning, think about the theatre at all, or even being in a play. I wanted to act in films. So, I started to prepare myself. I found a list of books I would need to read to get admitted to the institute and, while still at school, read all of Shakespeare.

“A very weak soprano”

I applied to our theatrical institute, even though my father was against it. I went to the Bolshoi Drama Theatre so that I could study with the great actress, Valentina Kovel. She had me doing purely comic work: there was no suggestion that I could be a serious actress. I was always playing the old lady who provides the comic relief. I wasn’t given anything decent to audition for.

This was a real tragedy for me. I cried long and hard, and decided I’d go to university instead. But my friends told me that Vladimir Vorobiev, director of the St. Petersburg Theatre of Musical Comedy, was holding auditions. I read him all that Kovel had taught me. Vorobiev liked it. He said: “Wonderful! And now you’ll sing.” But I didn’t know how to sing. The only song I knew was I Lost My Ring that I’d sung on the train all those years before. So I went ahead and sang it. Vorobiev was horrified. The musical comedy department was part of the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory’s preparatory school, and I should have sung an aria. “The admissions board will faint when you get up and start your wailing,” said Vorobiev, and he sent me off home to prepare. Going before the board was an utterly shaming experience. They were all appalled. I remember my marks. I got a 5 [an A] for my acting ability, a 3 [a C] for my singing, and the further down you got on the list, the worse the marks were. On top of the bad marks someone had written: “A very weak soprano”. But I was accepted, and began my studies.

32 productions a month

We had a great time studying. We never left the Musical Comedy Theatre: we had 32 productions a month. My vocal coach was Tatyana Lebed. I adore her. At first, she told me that I would have to practise at home, to pant like a dog for 20 minutes a day. She was trying to get me to use my diaphragm. At home I hid myself away and panted like a dog. My parents thought I was going round the bend. At the start I sang with a loud, jarring voice, because Lebed had told me that the most important thing was to make myself heard over the orchestra. Three years later, I got top marks in singing and was even sent on to the Conservatory! By the time I had finished my studies, I was already a soloist. I gradually started to sing the main roles. Next year it will be 25 years since I started work at the theatre.

News

Marina Tregubovich: “I didn’t know how to sing”

Marina Tregubovich:
“I didn’t know how to sing”