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Pablo Picasso & Olga Khokhlova // Olga was a Ukrainian-Russian dancer, a member of the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev, also known as the first wife of Pablo Picasso and the mother of his son, Paulo. Olga married Picasso on July 12, 1918 at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Paris. Jean Cocteau and Max Jacob were witnesses to the marriage. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. Though her insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso’s bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict.
Getty Images/Fotobank
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Evgeniy Yevtushenko & Jan Butler // Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a Soviet and Russian poet. He has been married four times. Yevtushenko's third wife was Jan Butler. She was an English translator of Yevtushenko’s poetry with whom he visited Ireland several times. So at first she was keen on his lyrics and then she felt in love with him personally. They have married in 1978, and lived together till 1986.
AP
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Sergei Esenin & Isadora Duncan // Isadora Duncan was an American dancer. Born in California, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 50. She performed to acclaim throughout Europe after being exiled from the United States for her Soviet sympathies. Sergei Esenin was one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets. The early death, unsympathetic views by some of the literary elite, adoration by ordinary people, and sensational behavior, all contributed to the enduring and near mythical popular image of this Russian poet. In 1922 Isadora and Sergei have engaged in relationship, though he was 18 years her junior. Yesenin accompanied her on a tour of Europe and the United States. The following year he left Duncan and returned to Moscow. He committed suicide in 1925, aged 30.
ITAR-TASS
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IIvan Turgenev & Pauline Viardot // According to the contemporary, Pauline Viardot had a tricky appearance: round-shouldered with male face features. But when she started singing, everything transfigured. Maybe that magic acted on Ivan Turgenev when he had heard her rendition of The Barber of Seville in Russia in 1843. Ivan adored her till the end of life, not even being her husband. A leading nineteenth-century French mezzo-soprano, pedagogue and composer of Spanish descent, Pauline was married to Louis Viardo. However, that did not stop Turgenev. In 1845 he left Russia to follow Pauline and eventually installed himself in the Viardot household, treated her four children as his own. She, in turn, critiqued his work and through her connections and social abilities, presented him in the best light whenever they were in public.
RIA Novosti, Getty Images/Fotobank
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Salvador Dalí & Gala // Gala was the wife and a source of inspiration for Paul Éluard and then Salvador Dalí. In August 1929, Dalí, that has already gained the popularity, met his lifelong and primary muse, inspiration, and future wife Gala, born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a Russian immigrant from Kazan' ten years his senior, who at that time was married to surrealist poet Paul Éluard. Born in a family of Russian intellectuals, Gala was used to the bohemian lifestyle, that they were cultivating with Dali. Gala died on June 10, 1982, at the age of 87. She was buried in the Castle of Pubol that Dali had bought her. After Gala's death, Dalí lost much of his will to live.
AP
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Vladimir Visotsky & Marina Vlady // Marina Vlady (born Marina de Poliakoff-Baidaroff, daughter of Russian immigrants) is a French actress, awarded at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival for the film "The Conjugal Bed". Vladimir Visotsky, who was a poet, singer-songwriter, actor, and generally a hero of Soviet culture felt in love with Marina in 1967. Fueled by Marina's exotic status as a Frenchwoman in the Soviet Union, and Vladimir's unmatched popularity in USSR, their love was passionate and impulsive. They were married in 1969. For 10 years the two maintained a long-distance relationship as Marina compromised her career in France in order to spend more time in Moscow, and Vladimir's friends pulled strings in order for him to be allowed to travel abroad to stay with his wife. Marina eventually joined the Communist Party of France, which essentially gave her an unlimited-entry visa into the Soviet Union, and provided Vladimir with some immunity against prosecution by the government.
ITAR-TASS
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Dmitry Khvorostovsky & Florence Illy // Famous Russian opera-singer, included by the People magazine in the list of the 50 most handsome men of the world, Dmitry Khvorostovsky has chosen for himself a pianist and singer Florence, who is of French-Italian origin. They've got acquainted in Geneva, where Dmitry had been singing in "Don Juan". Florence was acting one of his numerous mistresses. The love story started on the scene and successfully continued in the reality.
ITAR-TASS
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Henry Matisse & Lydia Delekorskaya // Lydia was born in Siberia in 1910. Her life changed in a second when her parents have died both during the Civil War. She was adopted by her aunt and then somehow managed to move to Nice, France. Once she had found an advertisement, where it was said that Henry Matisse (she had known nothing about him) searches models for his painting "The Dance". At that time the wife of Matisse Amely got ill and Lydia became a nurse. Initially 63-year old Matisse was not interested in 22-year old girl. He was rather a connoisseur of "southern" vibrant type of beauty. Lydia had quite the opposite appearance and temperament, which the painter appreciated later.
Getty Images/Fotobank
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Marius Petipa & Maria Surovschikova // Maria Surovshchikova studied at the St. Petersburg Imperial Ballet School, graduating in 1854. After her graduation from the institute she entered into the corps de ballet of the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre, and in 1854 married Marius Petipa, who at that time served as premier danseur to the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres. French-Russian ballet dancer, teacher and choreographer, Petipa is considered to be the most influential ballet master and choreographer of ballet that has ever lived.
Wikipedia
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Oleg Popov & Gabriella Lemann // Oleg Popov is a famous Soviet and Russian clown and circus artist. He has met German chemists’ assistant Gabriela Lehmann, 32 years his junior, and marries her in 1991. Now he lives in Germany, though he does not learn German language. Instead, Gabriela has learned how to speak Russian.
AFP/East News
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Johann Strauss & Olga Smirnitskaya // Young but already acclaimed Austrian composer Johann Strauss came in Russia in 1856. Passionate for music, he also suffered from another mental fever… Her name was Olga Smirnitskya. Being one of the first Russian female composers, she was writing music based on the lyrics of Lermontov and Pushkin. Strauss arranged her opuses. He hoped to marry her, however, unfortunately, these hopes were not destined to be realized. Olga's parents had chosen another husband for the beloved daughter and Strauss was left in despair.
Alamy/Legion Media
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Yuri Lyubimov & Katalina Kunz // Yuri Lyubimov is a Soviet and Russian stage actor and director associated with the internationally-renowned Taganka Theatre which he founded. He is one of the leading names in the Russian theatre world. Under Lyubimov, the theatre rose to become the most popular in Moscow, with Vladimir Vysotsky and Alla Demidova as the leading actors. During the tour in Hungary he made an acquaintance with local journalist Katalina Kunz. Since then they are inseparable. Despite complicated arrangements between the artists of the Theatre and Katalina, who was an actual manager of the Theatre till 2011, when after a scandal, she quitted, their relations with Lyubimov are still intact.
ITAR-TASS
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Tonino Guerra & Eleonora Yablochkina // Tonino was an Italian concentration camp survivor, poet, writer and screenwriter who has collaborated with some of the most prominent film directors of the world. He worked with Michelangelo Antonioni on The Red Desert, Blowup, Zabriskie Point and Identification of a Woman, with Federico Fellini on Amarcord. His main muse was Russian Eleonora Yablochkina. Firstly, he didn't speak Russian, she didn't speak Italian. But soon they got used to speak one language. Tonino noticed that due to her, he became half-Russian too.
Getty Images/Fotobank
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Erwin Schrott & Anna Netrebko // Anna is a Russian operatic soprano. Netrebko was born in Krasnodar in a family of Kuban Cossack background. She was identified by the journal Musical America as "a genuine superstar for the 21st century" and was named 'Musician of the Year' for 2008. In 2008 Netrebko announced that she and her fiancé, Uruguayan baritone Erwin Schrott, had married, but their wedding has actually never taken place. But who cares if they are in love?
ITAR-TASS
