Lina Mkrtchyan. If you transfer her surname Mkrtchyan from Armenian, you get the word "Baptist", and the singer chose the name Lina, short for Elena, consciously. There was once a singer Lin, mourning the sins of the world.
Filmmaker Alexander Sokurov enthusiastically spoke about this singer with an unusual voice, saying that such talents are given by God as a mission, as a cross. They are the vehicles between the Creator and creation, connecting people with the Divine principle.
Singer Biography
Lina Mkrtchyan, whose biography is worth writing several books, was born in Ukraine, in the city of Odessa on Christmas Eve. From birth, the Lord led Helen Mkrtchyan in his own way. The maternity hospital was directly opposite the Orthodox church. From childhood, the girl sang in the temple, was always singing, and she liked it, despite the Soviet era.
Lina Mkrtchyan’s talent allowed her to enter the Gnesins Academy of Musical Arts at the age of seventeen, then to the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and later she graduated from the Lunacharsky Theater Academy.
The singer’s voice is unusual, it is considered one of the best contralto and allows her to sing soprano arias in various ranges. As a student, Lina already performed complex works. Now in her repertoire there are more than eight hundred musical creations, from Italian spiritual works to modern ones.
Many composers wrote and dedicated their compositions to her even when she studied at the Academy and the Conservatory.
Lina Mkrtchyan. "Homecoming"
The pope invited her once to perform Russian sacred music in the Vatican. And in 1996, the singer performed at Carnegie Hall, accompanied by the orchestra of Evgeny Kolobov. For several years, Lina has been the author and host of the Moscow Spiritual-Educational Cycle “Homecoming,” which she created in 1999.
At the evenings dedicated to a certain cycle, Lina Mkrtchyan does not sing, but combines invited guests, heroes of the cycle and the audience. It must be said that Patriarch Alexy II himself blessed the cycle.
What is the cycle talking about?
Each program focuses on a specific topic. For example, Russian saints, such as Seraphim of Sarov, the royal martyr-martyrs, the Monk Anthony of Sioux, St. Nicholas the Great and many others who lived in ancient times. From modern people, Lina Mkrtchyan selects and talks about those who did not spare their souls, worked for the good of man and the Lord God. This is the recently deceased Patriarch Alexy II, and Metropolitan John (Snychev), and many others.
The very name "Homecoming" suggests that everyone should have one motherland - this is the Kingdom of Heaven and our Fatherland.
This amazing woman saw a lot in life, but the main thing was laid in her in her childhood. Lina was in the temple, and then she sang, starting at the age of four, and around her were, according to her own words, holy people. Ordinary grandmothers in white handkerchiefs who cried with happiness if they were allowed to wipe the icons, mop the floor, and clean the candlesticks. And then, in godless times, faith was alive thanks to people who did not know money-grubbing, anger, quarrels and unforgiveness in the temple, which, unfortunately, often happens today.
First teacher from God
The singer is also grateful to the Lord that he brought her together with Polina Lvovna Tronina, a vocal teacher who was a native of the Russian, and not the Italian, vocal school, which is now being planted everywhere as an ideal.
The Russian vocal school teaches, first of all, the prayer attitude to the word, and Polina Lvovna herself studied with the famous singer Preobrazhenskaya, who wore the honorary title “Soloist of His Majesty”. The same title was first received by Fedor Chaliapin.
When Lina Mkrtchyan appeared before the teacher, she was only sixteen years old and she knew by heart all the church chants that she performed with all her voices: soprano, viola, tenor and even bass. Polina Lvovna was so delighted with the girl that she simply didn’t let her go and not only did not break her talent, but also increased, and most importantly, she gave Lina culture.
Esenin's Chest
For three years the girl was sleeping on the chest on which Sergey Yesenin, a friend of Polina Lvovna, was sleeping. They were friends and sometimes, when he came home to Polina, they were so carried away by conversations that they forgot about time, and the poet went to bed on a huge chest, which Lina initially mistook for a bed. Interestingly, when talking about Yesenin, Polina Lvovna said that she had never seen him drunk.
Lina Mkrtchyan is a creative singer and loves to study, she was greatly influenced by the sun of Russian poetry Alexander Pushkin, Anna Akhmatova, Sergey Yesenin, Mikhail Lermontov, Tyutchev, Tchaikovsky, Grechaninov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka, Fedor Chaliapin, Anastasia Tsvetaeva, who prayed for a long time Before releasing Lina somewhere, it seemed to her that everyone offended her, and she was right. Lena is still not allowed to sing, she does not have a salary, there is no work book, she will not receive a pension and is doomed to adversity. She gives all the money earned at concerts to charity, and one Bulgarian singer after her concert was so stunned that she constantly repeated that the singer had three throats, she was all gold from head to toe, and nobody knew her.
Lina Mkrtchyan. Films
Lina Mkrtchyan considers working with director Alexander Sokurov interesting and difficult physically. The director rented a hall for the Singing Chapel in St. Petersburg all night, and she sang all night, and he wrote.
Elena Vladimirovna is glad that in the best film of the director “Quiet Pages” her performance is played by Mahler, accompanied by the Mariinsky Orchestra.
This singer gives all of herself, her blood when she sings. Once the Russian composer Gavrilin came to listen to her singing Glinka. In the interval, sitting on a chair, he told one friend that if Lina would sing like that, she would not live more than a year.
Fortunately, the singer is still alive, but she compares herself to a rooster with a severed head, which has been running for some time.