Vano Muradeli
Vano Muradeli was a Soviet composer and conductor. Born Ivan Muradov on April 6, 1908, in Gori, he studied at the Tiflis Music Technical School and graduated from the Tiflis Conservatory in 1931. His teachers there included Sergei Barkhudaryan and Vladimir Shcherbachyov in composition and Mikhail Baghrinovsky in conducting. From 1934 to 1938, he studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory with Nikolai Myaskovsky and Boris Shekhter.
Early in his career, Muradeli worked as an actor and composer at a touring theater in Tiflis, then as musical director at the Theater of Working Youth and the Kote Marjanishvili Drama Theater. He also worked as a conductor. From 1939, he composed music for feature films and documentaries, as well as for theater productions. His film scores included The Commander of Bird Island, Nasreddin in Khujand, or The Enchanted Prince, and A Dream Come True.
Muradeli wrote operas, operettas, a ballet, orchestral and vocal-symphonic works, and more than 200 songs. His works include the operettas The Girl with Blue Eyes and Moscow–Paris–Moscow, his Symphony No. 2 in D major, and Georgian Symphonic Dance. He also wrote the song “Legendary Sevastopol,” which became the city’s anthem in 1994, alongside songs, romances, choral music, and scores for stage productions.
Muradeli held posts in the USSR Union of Composers and the Russian SFSR Union of Composers. He received second-class Stalin Prizes in 1946 and 1951 and was named People’s Artist of the USSR in 1968. He wrote the memoir From My Life, published in 1970, as well as reviews and articles on musical culture.
He died in Tomsk on August 14, 1970, and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.