Page 479 - Revelation
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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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