08/12/2022
I think my students will breathe new energy into me, my own creative activity will continue. This task I perceive as a mission. It's not sad at all to take up teaching when you start to grow old and soon you will not be able to sing yourself. On the contrary, I look forward to working in my school with hope and joy. I want to end my story with one episode. It was the summer of 1976. I participated in a music festival in the southern Italian city of Bari. It was only the second time that the festival was held there, and the organizers were very persistent, asking me to speak. Being free, I agreed and came, but the festival did not turn out to be any remarkable event. What is remarkable, however, is that there is a cathedral of St. Nicholas in Bari, this saint lived in those places in the Middle Ages, and maybe even earlier. In the city there is a basilica built in memory of Nicholas - they say that his relics lie in it. I have an icon of St. Nicholas, I received it from my father. He bought it during a trip to Bari with a choir in 1928. I usually keep this image in Russian prayer book. On the reverse side of the icon, the father wrote that it was blessed in the same cathedral.