Ukrainian Carmen and her traits in world music, from Haydn and Motzart to The Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller
Ukraine has her Carmen and the poetess who left her traits in centuries, though her life is half a legend. Her name was Marusya, which is a diminutive of Maria.
According to legend, Marusya Churay was born in 1625 and lived in Poltava. She was the daughter of the Cossack centurion Gordiy Churay, who became one of the leaders of the anti-Polish uprising. Marusya's father was a foreman during the Ostryanin uprising and was burned on fire in Warsaw as a rebel.
Marusya remained to live with her mother. The girl was incredibly beautiful and had many suitors, among them was the young Cossack Ivan Iskra. But she was in love with another - Hryts (Gregory) Bobrenko, the son of a cornet of the Poltava Regiment, to whom she secretly became engaged.
In 1648, the anti-Polish war started, and Hryts went to war, promising to return. Marusya Churai waited for him for four years, but when he returned, it turned out he had started to court another girl from a noble and wealthy family.
The love story ended tragically: Marusia-Maria poisoned the cheater, some legends say with the intent, other ones - that she had prepared the poison for herself, but he drank it by mistake.
Marusya Churai was sentenced to death, but she was pardoned by a decree of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, which was brought in time by Ivan Iskra (the unfortunate suitor). The decree stated that no one kills anyone who loves sincerely in their right mind but not in affection, and therefore, she should not be punished without reason. Hetman ordered to count the head of the Poltava Cossack Centurion Gordiy Churai, cut off by the Poles as the pay for the sake of the wonderful songs that she composed. Marusia was released and made a pilgrimage to the holy sites in Kyiv, after which she returned to Poltava and dyied in 1652 or 1653 at 28, after taking a veil according to some legends.
There is no documentary evidence that she existed, but she has become so famous and the songs that are considered to be written and composed by her so popular that she became an embodiment of the Ukrainian female soul, like thinking about the Spanish woman, the world thinks about Carmen, not thousands of silent women.
There are a lot of songs that were supposedly composed by her, but her love story is told in one "Oh, Hryts (Gregory), Don't Go To The Parties"
The song was translated into German and French, and the melody was used by Mozart, Haydn, List, van Beethoven, and it's new life started with the Jewish emigration from the Russian Empire. The Jews brought it to New York, and it is way simpler to find a recording by David Medoff on YouTube than by the Ukrainian opera singers. David Medoff recorded only one of the variants, and I have surprisingly found Israeli recordings in Hebrew. The song has been extremely popular in Ukraine regardless of the figure of Marusia, but it is supposed that she belonged to the time that the Jews consider a tragedy.
In Ukraine, the drama became the basis of dozens of poems, novels, playscripts, many of them just followed the line in the song, not the Cossack story, like the clip made of the film of the 1970s, it is rather a story about a villagers in the 19th centrury, they are dressed according to that time, than the drama of the Cossack upper class.
At the end "Oh, Hryts, Don't Go To Parties" became the famous American "Yes, My Darling Daughter" performed by The Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller and many others. It combined klezmer and the altered Ukrainian lyrics, which resemble the original plot - just without the murder. The music was taken from the old vaudeville "Cassack-Poet" composed by an Italian Russian, and the lyrics and the arrangement belong to Jack Lawrence, who with all his anglocised named was a son of the Ukrainian Jews from the Kyiv Governorate Jacob Louis Schwatz. And what is wonderful in this story is that Jacob-Jack was born in Brooklyn, but he knew the song. This means his parents sang it, though their native language was definitely Yiddish, but they lived among the Ukrainians.
The photo is of the actress Nila Kkrukova acting Marusia Churai in 1981.
The song and its alterations below.
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