Page 259 - The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1

Nicolai Levashov. The Mirror of My Soul. Vol. 1. Born in the USSR

After this solo someone from the jury told me that I should take up singing

professionally and that there was a very good vocal studio at the university. In a couple
of weeks I decided to go there and studied singing until I graduated from the university.
I did not aspire to sing in public. I was more interested in learning to manage my voice,
which I did. The vocal studio was run by Tamara Nikolaevna, if I am not mistaken, a
professional singer of the Kharkov opera. I am very grateful to her for my voice training.

One almost comic episode also helped me to combat my nervousness on stage. As
I was one of the vocalists, I had to participate in the next amateur concert of the Kharkov
University. As usual, all this was done trusting to luck. An accordionist, with whom I
had never rehearsed and per-formed before, accompanied all of us. I gently sang him the
melody of my song. He quickly under-stood what kind of song I was going to sing, but
because of the lack of time we were unable to re-hearse even once.

Well, my entrance was announced and he began to play an octave higher than he
should! What a situation! I was forced to follow the much higher than normal melody.
Certainly I “sang” the first verse and on the second one roared at him: “Lower, play it

lower…” Certainly, it turned out very funny, but strangely enough, this situation allowed
me to disconnect myself fully from the stage and the audience. After this I felt quite with
ease, when coming to the stage. I could be nervous before, but when I stepped out onto
the stage, I was fully immersed in the activity, for which I was there.

When I was a student, I often had to organize different student parties and new-
year masquerades and take part in the performances. Together with my fellow-students
I made “fancy dress” for these parties and wore them during our performances. Once I
even had to write a script for the whole party and compose ditties for a student new-year
party. I still remember several verses. Everything happened as is usual in student’s skits:
a lot of humour, some irony, most of all we laughed at ourselves. I and another fellow
from the choir were both presenters and performers. I played Grandfather Frost (Santa
Claus), while Igor Iovenko, who was almost the same height as me, was the Snow
maiden (Santa’s granddaughter). We both had moustaches then and for the first time in
my life I shaved mine off, expressing my solidarity with him. In short, we all had fun.

I’ve described my attitude toward the stage in order to show that I had to work on
myself a lot to even go out onto the stage. Thanks to this I feel confident, even in front
of a hostile audience and despite whatever tricks from the opposition, enemies or
sceptics I am able to convey to people what I consider necessary. It turned out that every
situation in my life prepared me for what I do now.

At the same time, in order for these situations to bring me to what I am now, I had
to work on myself a lot, to create myself. These situations were the external force which
made me do all this. So, judging by my own experience I can say that everything that
happens to us is for the best (certainly, if you gather all your will and refuse to break you
can compel circumstances to work in your favour!). It turned out that almost everything
that happened in my life, one way or another, prepared me for the path of a warrior. In
principle, any movement forward is a way of overcoming both one-self and
circumstances. This is how things work.

Let us return to Arkhangelsk. Here I was—standing on-stage and several hundred
pairs of eyes stared at me and everyone wanted something from me (very often it was
not that which I would like to give them). The main purpose of my educational -curative

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