Case of Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev died on the same day as Stalin on March 5, 1953. The death of the “leader of the peoples” overshadowed the departure of the musician. Everyone who wanted to say goodbye to him went to the House of Composers, where a civil panic took place, with room flowers in pots: there were simply no others - everyone "raised" Stalin. Next to the tomb stood the sad and humble Mira Mendelssohn, a widow.

At the same time, another widow of Prokofiev - the son-in-law of Lina Lubera - used to push a barrel of wipes in a women's camp in the village of Abez. And knowing nothing about the death of the man she loved most in the world.
For a long time this name - Caroline Codine-Luber - was not in any biography of Prokofiev. It would not be appropriate for one of the most famous Soviet composers, the six-time winner of the Stalin Prize, to have a foreign wife. Meanwhile, it was with this fragile Spanish woman, in which there was a lot of "enemy" blood - Polish, French and Catalan - Sergei Prokofiev lived a long 20 happy years. But she was ruthlessly erased first from the composer's life, and then even from the memories of him. They left a place only for the "model" of Mira Mendelssohn: graduates of the literary institute, the Komsomol, the daughter of the "old Bolshevik" Abram Mendelssohn and - according to rumors - the niece of Lazar Kaganovich.

Caroline grew up in a musical family: her father, Juan Codina, was a Spanish singer, and her mother, Olga Nemysskaja, was a Polish singer. And so they followed the musical events of New York, where they moved from Spain. And in 1918, the nail of the music program "Big Apple" was just Prokofiev. He performed in the famous Carnegie Hall. The manner of his performance, his own authorship things excited Olga Nemysskaja, and she literally forced her daughter - a beginner singer - to get to know Prokofiev after the concert.

Lina didn’t want to go behind the scenes too much: yes, she liked his music, but the long-held 27-year-old Russian wasn’t too interested in her. Line was barely 21 years old, but she knew the price: like two drops of water like the star of silent cinema Theresa Brooks, men passing by looked after her for a long time. He spoke five languages and sang very well.
It is clear why she did not want to appear to Prokofiev as one of the enthusiastic fans. But she had to surrender under maternal pressure. Lina wanted to stay unnoticed in the crowd of other ladies, frozen on the threshold. However, Prokofiev immediately identified the black-haired girl and invited her to enter. From that it all started. As he later wrote in his diary, Lina “has struck me with the vividity and glow of her black eyes and some young trembling. In a word, it was the type of Mediterranean beauty that has always attracted me.”
They hadn’t spent a day without each other. Specifically for his Bird - as Prokofiev called Lina - he wrote a cycle of five songs. Then there were other works. And they performed together - the Russian pianist and composer Prokofiev and the Spanish messo-soprano Lubera (as a creative nickname she took the name of the grandmother on the motherline).

During the tour, Caroline learned Russian while playing. And also between tours they managed to get married - on September 20, 1923 in the Bavarian town of Etal. In February 1924, a small Svyatoslav appeared in their family. Four years later, his second son, Oleg. The fragile bird was still accompanied by the eyes of men. Over the years, she has only worn, acquired a loose. For an example of elegance she was held in the musical circles of Paris and London, New York and Milan. Balmont dedicated her poetry, Picasso, Dagilyev and Matisse highly appreciated her style, Stravinsky and Rahmaninov, despite the musical rivalry with Prokofiev, paid tribute to her voice and, most importantly, - the talent to combine three positions together: singer, secular lady and composer wife. As the last, she not only cared about Prokofiev's everyday life, but also engaged in the organization of tours and associated frequent moves, negotiated, translated: She managed everything playing, elegant and beautiful. According to the memories of Prokofiev’s sons, “Mama’s word was decisive.”

When the composer came up with the idea of returning to the USSR after a long 18-year tour, it was the bird that put a point in all these doubts and throws. In his homeland, Prokofiev was promised to write music. In the West, he, like Rahmaninov and Stravinsky, was forced to postpone writing for the sake of performing activity: only in this way he could earn. Lina, who adored her husband, perfectly understood: creativity for him - in the first place. So we have to move.

In 1936, the Prokofiev family returned to the USSR. The children went to an Anglo-American school. Lina blinked at receptions in numerous embassies – she was always in the center of attention. Prokofiev was really allowed to create. True, not long: very soon he was explained what the task of the Soviet composer was. And almost parallel to “Romeo and Juliet” he writes “Lenin’s Cantata”, composes an opera about the Ukrainian colloquium – “Semen Kotko”. And he sees how the circle of his friends rotates – he is arrested, this is missing, this is shot, declared a spy, etc. and so on. But she doesn’t even think about changing: why should she stop communicating with her foreign friends, visiting embassies, writing to mothers to France? What stupidity is this?

In 1938, Prokofiev went to Kislovodsk to rest. And almost in the first letter he read: "Here behind me is a charming Jewish woman, but you do not think of anything bad." And in vain. Prokofiev did not resist the persecution of Mira Mendelssohn. Their holiday romance has grown into a permanent novel. In 1941, the composer left his family. Per if the bird damaged at least one tear, he would have stopped: but that “holds the mark.” She did not like to complain. I could not tolerate the nuts. Looking at Lina, no one could even think of what demons are breaking her soul. Because with the departure of Prokofiev she did not accept for a second, and did not stop loving him for a second.

She loved the composer and Mira is the right girl from the right family. For a long time, Lina was convinced that their break-up was only temporary. She did not accommodate scandals, did not burden with requests. But in a few years
Prokofiev talked about divorce. She stood up on the ass. What was there more, love, wounded pride, or mere fear for the fate of one’s own and children? She entered the USSR as the wife of a Soviet composer. Who will she be after her divorce? A foreign spy? Enemy of the people? Eventually, smart people explained to Prokofiev: marriage with a Spanish woman, registered in Bavaria, in the USSR - invalid. He can marry peacefully. What the composer did on January 15, 1948. A month after the wedding, Cody was arrested as a foreign woman.
He was spy and sentenced to 20 years in camps.

There, she learned about her husband's death - by chance: one of the same prisoners heard on the radio that it sounds like a concert dedicated to the memory of Prokofiev. said to Lina. And then this proud woman cried so much that the guards were forced to release her from work to the bar. She bitterly mourned the man who left her alone with her sons in the most difficult moment, who dropped her on the arbitrary fate, and for whose fault she was in the camps. From Kolyma Lina returned three years after the deaths of Stalin and Prokofiev. And, according to the memories of the contemporaries, two days later, it was again a model of elegance. She declared her rights to the composer’s legacy, and it was here that a spicy circumstance emerged, which in legal practice was called “Prokofiev’s case”: the genius left behind two widows at once. Now that Stalin was gone, the marriage of Prokofiev with Lina again became legal. Lene and her sons had almost all their possessions.

Lena wanted to go to the West. She turned unsuccessfully to Brezhnev, asking her to see her elderly mother. In 1971, her younger son Oleg got permission to go to London for the funeral of his wife-English, who died in Russia from infection with viral hepatitis, and see his daughter from this marriage. Oleg lived and worked in Britain. In 1974, one of Lina’s letters, addressed to the then Chairman of the KGB Yuri Andropov, asking her to leave for a month in Britain to see her son and granddaughter, was answered: three months later she was called from OVIR and that she was granted a three-month visa for a trip to Britain. At that time she was 77 years old. She did not return. But Lina could not be considered a refugee. The Soviet authorities did not want the political scandal that would arise if the widow of the great Prokofiev had sought political asylum in the West. The Soviet embassy in London extended her visa without any problems. In the West, Lina Prokofiev shared her time between London and Paris, where her eldest son and family later moved. She spent a lot of time in the United States and Germany. In London, in 1983, she founded the Sergey Prokofiev Foundation, to which she transferred her extensive archive, including correspondence with her husband. She was invited to prokofiev anniversaries, festivals, concerts. Lina Prokofiev celebrated her last, 91st birthday on October 21, 1988, at the hospital in Bonn, where her sons arrived. She was deadly sick, but lost her champagne. She was transferred to the Winston Churchill Clinic in London, where she died on January 3, 1989.

Records of Lina Lubera's soprano are not preserved. Caroline Codin-Luber lived a long life. At the age of 77, she started her life again. He travelled a lot and raised his grandchildren. But the main thing - she was engaged in the re-release of Prokofiev's musical heritage, did everything so that the name of her great husband was not forgotten in the West. He is truly known, remembered and loved.