Мастер и Маргарита

Валерий Леонтьев - Маргарита

Valery Yakovlevich Leontev (° 19/03/1949, Ust-Usa) was born in the Rus-sian republic of Komi. He is a Soviet and Russian pop singer who had the highlight of his career in the '80s. After his hard youth in Ivanovo he wanted to study oceanography at the University of the Far East in Vladivostok, but he was refused and decided to pursue a singing career while he was making a living as a flax spinner and a postman.

In 1971 he took part in a regional singing competition and he began to taste success. In 1983, he started studying at the Krupskaya Institute of Culture in Leningrad, where he would get his diploma in 1987, and mean-while he performed with the most diverse genres of music - from opera to rock songs and variety - while he also starred in films . Soon his glitter costumes, spectacular lighting effects and bombastic dance scenes would become his trademark. And many awards at festivals would follow.

Elsewhere on this site can read that, in 1986, the Russian composer of po-pular tunes Yuri Chernavsky had written the song Margarita for the then little known singer Sergei Minaev.

Read more about Serge Minaev

Without waiting for the release of the record of Minaev, Chernavsky propo-sed to Valery Leontev to make a new version with new arrangements. In 1990 the song was put on Leontev’s record Грешный путь (Gresjny Put) or Path of Sin. Movie director Vadim Korotkov and script writer Yuri Grymov were asked to make the first video clip in the Soviet Union.

Valery Leontev won the television contest Pesnya 89 (The Song of '89) with his version of Margarita. He would reinterpret the song again several times, including a version with the famous Choir of the Russian Army from St. Petersburg. His last idea, in 2009, was to bring it in a duet with French singer Patricia Kaas, who is very popular in Russia.