Page 479 - Revelation
P. 479
Svetlana de Rohan-Levashova. Revelation
According to professionals I have a very powerful voice. Indeed I do. I could
easily make everything shake in a Kharkov University Hall which was large enough,
using no microphones, and not only there. So, I can say that it is quite easy to sing at
the top of one’s voice, having such a powerful instrument, but to sing something in a
low voice, so that all would hear it, is very difficult. So, the matter here is not in my
partiality, but in truth.
It is of interest that Svetlana did not tell me for a long time that she graduated from
a Vilnus conservatory, getting Master of Music in Voice and Piano Performance and
that she was a star in Lithuania.
When she left the stage being at the peak of her popularity, she once and for all
left her former husband, despite his pleading on his knees to forgive that
misunderstanding which never would be repeated again. But she was unable to forgive
his treachery. She left the apartment, which she had earned by herself, to him. In short,
she behaved like the man should have behaved.
On sharply dropping her singing career at its peak, Svetlana did not fall into panic
or depression. She mastered a new profession, that of fashion designer, getting a second
higher education. She achieved success in this, which was not lesser that of a singer.
She was engaged in batik creating. Let’s not forget the fact that those were the Soviet
times when to make one’s way through was very difficult. Moreover, it was very
complicated to find materials of at least decent quality and the necessary dyes to
achieve the colour spectrum she needed. That is why Svetlana began to dye the batik
in her kitchen, adding the dyes in appropriate ways and proportions to get this or that
play of colour or a transition of one colour into another.
And then she sewed colourful dresses using her own designs. Her works were
very popular, including among foreigners. Japanese and West-Europeans readily
bought them up, I suspect, for far less money that her works cost in fact. To tell the
truth Svetlana told very little about herself, wild horses wouldn't drag it from her. Her
batik designer works had got the highest awards at many exhibitions when they came
there from Japan and Western Europe. I don’t know how long she was doing this. She
mentioned it in passing, complaining that it was almost impossible to find materials
and dyes in the USSR to make her ideas a reality. On exhausting the creative potential
of batik maximally, she began to immerse herself in other activities. Nevertheless, her
dream to create beauty disappeared nowhere and was realized much later, in the USA,
but I shall tell about it in detail in my autobiographical book The Mirror of My Soul.
I think I shall put on my web-site a disc which recorded the showing of Svetlana’s
first fashion collection in 2000. Regrettably, it became the first and the last
demonstration of her creations in the field of fashion, which she prepared almost all by
herself from the very beginning to the very end! Fashion critics called her the best
th
designer of the 20 century. It is of interest that such high esteem was expressed by a
particular critic much feared by most fashion designers. His negative comment could
well mean the crash of their career. It is one thing when a positive, and even high,
estimation is given by a paid journalist, but his public declaration was a complete
surprise even for Svetlana.
Nevertheless, the world of "high fashion" organized a very united badgering for
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