Old Russian romance: “Ugolok“, (2/2) Varya Panina

“(...)Varya Panina first hit the stage at the tender age of 14. She started off singing with a Gypsy choir at a restaurant frequented by rich, free-spending, merchants. Completely illiterate, the young girl learned her songs off records, but the way she sang them would send shivers down the spines of her numerous fans. Among her admirers were Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and even Emperor Nicholas the Second. Varya Panina went out on stage wearing somber, expressly unflashy attires. She was absolutely plain an