#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. At the Sopot festival, Muslim Magomayev performed the Russian folk song – Along the Petersburg street, the Polish song called It was on that day and won first place. Pop stars from 27 countries of the world came to the Sopot-69 festival, but, as they wrote in the press, Magomayev had everything at the festival: “voice, appearance, manners and songs but not rivals”.
The winner in August 1969 turned just 27 years old, by that time the singer had had an internship at La Scala, a tour in Paris and, despite the invitation to the Bolshoi Theater, a conscious choice of stage.
It is known that by 1969, Muslim Magomayev had already visited the Krasnoyarsk region with concerts -, it was the regional capital in 1966. The singer flew to Norilsk together with a vocal and instrumental ensemble, the name of which is not preserved in the archive.
The program of the concert held in the combine’s Palace of Culture has not survived either. Surely The Best City of the Earth sounded, which Magomayev sang for the first time in 1964. It is possible that the singer sang the Buchenwald Alarm and Figaro’s cavatina from The Barber of Seville, with which he won the World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki in 1962.
Surely on that December evening hits of the 60s sounded: Snowfall, Queen of Beauty, Ferris Wheel, Blue Eternity, and the future hits of the twentieth century were on the way: You are My Melody, Wedding.
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Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Chin-Mo-Tsai/Norilsk Nickel Polar Division archive
