Galima "Black Nightingale" in Rostov-on-Don

Rostov-On-Don, Russia (Jan.5, 1912)

Teatr Kayarz Pel'-Ni

Following a successful tour of the Caucasus region, Emma Harris as Galima, the Algerian Arab "Black Nightingale" performed at the Teatr Kayarz Pel'-Ni in Rostov-on-Don, 20 miles from the Sea of Azov. Around this time, she was being managed by her film director husband, Alexander Mizikin.

Galima "Black Nightingale"

Coretti de-Utina's early Bolshevik involvement (1913-1916)

Petrograd (1913-1917)

While studying at the St. Petersburg Music Conservatory, Coretti was introduced to an esteemed member of the Petrograd Conservatory and popular pianist, Nikolai Burenin, and it wasn't long before he offered her a interesting proposition in joining his latest venture, the Society of Fine Arts. Burenin and fellow pianist (and director of the St. Petersburg Theater of Musical Drama) Mikhail Bichter organized the Society in 1911 under the League of Education and received permission in early 1913 from E.P. Karpov (chief director of Imperial Theaters) to turn the organization into a independent society with its own charters. The organization was divided into four sections: Musical, Dramatic, Literary and Artistic (sculpture and painting). The musical section, headed by Burenin, consisted of more than a hundred singers, pianists, violinists, cellists, musicologists and professors from the conservatory. Around the Russian capital, the Society arranged “literary & musical mornings”, which gathered large audiences of five to six hundred people consisting of workers and peasants. The carefully organized program promoted the best works of Russian romance, folk and classical music such as the works of Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Glazunov. The majority of the public concerts were usually held in the hall of the Tenishev Secondary School (at 33-35 Mokhovaya) as well as at the Zemsky School, Worker's Clubs and the Labor Exchange. Touring with the Society of Fine Arts, Coretti soon discovered that she was performing before audiences of revolutionaries who used the concerts as fronts for their anti-government meetings. A significant part of the income from the paid concerts went to the Bolshevik party. Through the underground revolutionary Burenin, Coretti was introduced to Countess Sofia V. Panina, F.I. Drabkina, V.V. Gordeeva, A.I. Mashirov and many other revolutionary actors, composers, musicians, artists and writers. From her new Bolshevik acquaintances, she became more familiar with the unrelenting fury and brutality of the Tsarist gendarmerie and Okhrana (secret police) upon the lower classes. The leaders of the proletariat were shadowed, hunted and sent to rot in distant Siberian prisons for their illegal underground activities.

From late April to early May 1914, the underground Bolshevik newspaper, Path of Truth (Pravda), announced the "Literary & Musical evenings" at the Ligovsky People's House, located on 63 Tambovskaya Lane, on Petrograd's outer edges near the numerous factories and industrial plants. The Ligovsky house was built in 1903 on the edge of St. Petersburg, housing classrooms, an observatory, legal advice, a savings bank. By 1913, the Bolsheviks used the building to offer entertainment and education to the impoverished workers/peasants who couldn't afford to visit the theaters, cabarets and musichalls in deeper in the city.

Literary & Musical Morning

Dedicated to the music of the oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa & America

Onstage, Corette dressed in ragged clothes with a sickle in her hand, before a backdrop of a blue sky and large grain field (very similar to her performances with the Louisiana Amazons), sang a series of Blues and Spirituals. Her songs of oppression, pain, anger & hope touched the hearts of the tired Russian peasants.

Early 1915, the Fine Arts Society appeared at the Women's Medical Institute where they offered a heavily censored concert for the wounded soldiers. Other Russian performers included monarchist, chauvinistic, anti-Jewish and anti-Armenian jokes and songs in their programs, much to the disgust of Burenin. The society soon began subtly including anti-war and pro-Bolshevik propaganda into their programs. Quickly, the hospital administration caught on and began issuing warnings. However, after the third concert, the Society was barred from appearing in war hospitals and infirmaries after a warrant was issued by the Okhrana.

Early 1916, the Fine Arts Society organized a concert held at the Tenishev School, with the participation of Maxim Gorky, who gave a fiery propaganda filled speech despite the presence of the secret police. A financially successful author, playwright and editor, Gorky (born Alexei Peshkov in 1868) was well noted for publicly opposing the Tsar, exposing the Tsarist government's control of the press and had been arrested and even exiled on numerous occasions. He supported liberal appeals to the government for civil rights and social reform. He was personal friend of Lenin since 1902, and was acquainted with many revolutionaries. His reputation grew as a literary voice of Russia's bottom strata of society and a fervent advocate of social, political and cultural transportation. Gorky also had a passionate love of the theater. One of his aspirations since the 1890s, was to develop a network of provincial theaters for the peasants in hopes to reform Russia's theatrical world. In 1904, he was able to open a theater in his hometown of Nizhny Novgorod, but unfortunately the government censors banned every play that he proposed and Gorky abandoned the project. On December 31, 1913, after the Romanov Tercentenary, Gorky was allowed to return home Russia after eight years of living in exile in Italy. By March 1914, he was living in St. Petersburg working as an editor for the underground Bolshevik Zvezda and Pravda newspapers. After the concert, Burenin introduced Coretti to Gorky, who confessed to her that despite his disdain for female entertainers, he was her biggest fan, expressing that her Negro folk songs captured the essence of the struggles of the proletariat. Gorky and Coretti became close friends, and she may been a frequent guest at his Petrograd apartment on 23 Kronversky Avenue where there was constant drinking, dancing, gambling and frequent readings of 18th Century pornographic novels (Marquis de Sade was rather popular). During these nights at Gorky’s home, Coretti would've mingled with publishers, academics, revolutionaries, the great singer Fyodor Chaliapin and even Lenin himself.

Coretti Arle-Titz in Revolutionary Vladivostok

Vladivostok, Russia (1918)

Golden Horn Theatre-Hotel

After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks concentrated their energies on seizing control across the entire incredibly large Russian landmass. Many people (particularly artists and entertainers) fled east into Siberia, where Soviet control hadn't reached (or was at least minimal). One particular destination was the port city of Vladivostok. The city was often the last destination of weary passengers of the Trans-Siberian railroad before traveling on towards China or even Japan. 

Map of a divided Russia (1918)

As Imperial Russia came to an end, much of Russia's small Afro-American expatriate community fled the country, returning to the United States (from which they escaped from in the first place). In early-1918, among those aboard the trains east were Georgette Harvey, Minnie Brown & even Corette Alefred (Arle-Titz). The majority of Russia's American community fled the country after the 1917 October revolution.

By December 4th, 1917, Minnie was engaged at the Palermo Restaurant in Harbin, China. Georgette had fled across Mongolia and China to Yokohama, Japan where she was soon employed as a maid. Corette remained in Russia, as she was seen appearing at the Golden Horn Hotel-Theatre in Vladivostok around August 1918.

As seen in Anatoly Vakhov's book 'Flame in the Tundra': 

"Mandrikov entered the strip of yellow light falling on the sidewalk, and involuntarily looked up. The light fell from the wide-open door of the restaurant "Golden Horn" and from its signboard, which, with fiery letters, crumbled down the cornice. From the doors it was drawn with warmth, a pleasant aroma of delicate dishes. I heard music. There were several cars at the entrance. The varnished doors and the hoods of the cars glistened with rain. Two uniformed American officers with ladies emerged from the newly arrived car, past Mandrikov....

In the hall, covered with a bluish haze of cigarettes and cigars, waiters wandered between the tables, crouching like felines. There was a rumble of voices, claps of champagne. At a distant table someone shouted: "For Russia the Great!" Mandrikov quickly examined the room and asked the head waiter to come up and set up a separate room. An elderly man with a loose face, with a glance at Mandrikov's companion, smiled knowingly and led them along a steep staircase to the mezzanine. The cabinet came out with one side to the common room. Mandrikov sat down so that, while remaining unnoticed from below, he himself could see almost the entire hall. There shined gold with epaulettes, jewelry on ladies. A large crystal chandelier filled the hall with light....

The orchestra played a fashionable slow dance - tango. Several pairs emerged in the middle of the hall. All these were foreign officers - Americans, British, Italians and French. Clinging tightly to his partner, they slowly walked around the hall, shuffling their soles and bending, as if exhausted from languor.

Tango was over. Suddenly the lights went out. There were surprised exclamations, a woman's laughter. Nina Georgievna expected that the hand of the cavalier would touch her, but this did not happen. In the farthest corner of the hall erupted two spotlights, red and green beams converged on the stage orchestra, highlighting the fixed half-naked female figure with her hands at her side. A whisper rang out through the hall, rare claps were heard. They were joined by new ones, and applause, like a storm, swept the hall.

"Bravo, Arle-Titz, bravo!"

The regulars of the restaurant learned the recently arrived mulatto Arle Titz, who is the performer of the exotic "belly dance", who came to Vladivostok. A short sparkling skirt and a narrow strip of silvery fabric on her chest made up her entire outfit. Black curly hair was intercepted by a band of sparkling gemstones. The orchestra began to play. At first the melody was slow, and the woman began to move to the rhythm with shoulders, hands, hips. The pace of the music grew faster and faster with every second, and she wriggled as fast as if she was tormented by a terrible illness. The audience was roaring, cackling, choking with squeals and groans ...

The projectors went out as suddenly as they flashed and gave way to the light of the chandeliers. On the stage there was suddenly no mulatto, but the audience was still buzzing, shouting, clapping, whistling ...

- How wonderful! - said Nina Georgievna, although she remained indifferent to Arle Titz, but envied her success, and most importantly - earnings much more light than her.

"It's disgusting!" - Mandrikov frowned disgustedly. - Eat. Mandrikov's last word sounded like an order...."

Possibly convinced by Boris Titz (whom she had been in a relationship with since September 1917, and later married Kharkov sometime in 1920), instead of continuing onward to China or Japan, Corette returned west to the Kharkov where in 1919 she graduated from the Kharkov Musical Conservatory and toured across the Ukraine with the Concert Brigade of the South-Western Front, performing in clubs, military camps, canteens and barracks for the Red Army.

Coretti Utina - Coretti Arle Titz's career in Imperial Russia

(1904-1920)

After touring two years with the, Louisiana Amazon Guards, Corette Alefred and another girl, Emma Harris from the vaudeville troupe departed Germany in the spring of 1904 for St. Petersburg, Russia. Initially opening at the Aquarium Gardens (Feb.1904) as the 'Kristy Kreol' duo, they were soon joined by Fannie Smith, who joined them the following month for an engagement in Helsinki and at Moscow's Aumont Theatre. 

During the winter of 1904, the girls joined Georgette Harvey and her Creole Belles in St. Petersburg for three months at the Krestovsky Theatre. The engagement ended abruptly on January 22, 1905 with the horrific event known as Bloody Sunday. Emma Harris organized the Harris Trio (with Corette & Fannie) and quickly returned to Moscow's Aumont Theatre. The trio lasted a month, afterwards Emma left for her own solo tour across Siberia. Corette and Fannie, as Koretty und Kreolin appeared in Poland to much success throughout the summer before returning for another series of engagements in Russia.

In 1908/09, Coretti met a wealthy businessman named Utin during a performance in St. Petersburg, five months later the couple married. Under the name, Coretti Genrichnova Utina, she continued touring across the Russian Empire, singing in Russian and French. In 1910, after a trip home to New York, Coretti began to dream of opening a musical school for children. Her touring became much more hectic afterwards, particularly performing across the Ukraine and the Baltic coast. Corette divorced her husband in the fall of 1913, as she enrolled into the Imperial Conservatory. There she met pianist and fellow student, Boris Borisovich Titz. So smitten was Boris, that the following year he offered his hand in marriage, however Coretti was still distraught over her previous marriage and refused. 

Upon completing her studies in 1916, she appeared in a series of performances alongside nearly 100 other students from the conservatory at the Theater of Musical Drama. The range of programs organized was very wide. The participants of the public concerts at the Musical Drama Theatre were well-known singers Zoya Lodiy, M. Brian, O. Butomo-Nazvanova, E. Donner, Coretti Utina (Arle Titz), A. Alexandrovich. V. Voitenko, P. Zhuravlenko, M. Zakopayko, P. Kurzner, N. Rozhdestvensky and others, cellist Yu. Bildstein (Van Oren), violinist I. Lesman, pianists M. Bichter , N. Kasatkina-Mikhaleva, composer and the critic V. Karatygin and others. As a pianist accompanist, sometimes Nikolai Burenin performed at concerts.

The following year, Coretti entertained the Bolshevik leaders at private vaudeville shows organized by pianist Nikolai Burenin at the industrial plants on the outskirts of Petrograd. Late 1917, despite Ukraine's political issues, she followed Mikhail Bichter & the Philharmonic Society Orchestra to Kharkiv where she performed frequently in musical productions organized at the Kharkiv Conservatory. From 1918-20, in-between her appearances in Kharkiv, toured the Ukraine apart of the Political Dept. Concert Brigade of the Southwestern Front. She performed for the Red Army in barracks and canteens, as they fought against occupying Germans and White Army troops.

Before departing Ukraine, in early 1920 Coretti made her triumphal appearance in the Philharmonic Orchestra's production of 'Aida', which was extremely well received by the Bolsheviks and often seen as her debut into the artistic world of the Soviet Union. This success was followed by her marriage to Boris Titz and her enrollment into the Moscow Musical Conservatory where she remained until her appearance at the Bolshoi Theatre in the spring of 1924 as Coretti Arle-Titz.

Coretti & Boris Titz at home in Moscow (1939)

Galima "Black Nightingale" ... Imperial Russia's Black Actress

Moscow, Russia (1915)

Upon the outbreak of WWI, Afro-American singer/dancer Emma Harris (known across the Russian Empire as Galima 'the Black Nightingale') liquidated her husband's chain of cinemas and sold their large estate in Kharkiv, Ukraine before relocating to Moscow and purchased a 15-room house in the central part of the city. 

As her husband/manger, Alexander Ivanovich Mizikin, was drafted to fight on the front, Emma's touring across the Empire abruptly stopped. In between her usual stage performances around Moscow's cabaret and music-halls, she met director Sigimund Veselovsky who was preparing a new film at the G.I. Libkin Studios at Yaroslavl. 

*Satan's Woman* Drama, 5 hours, 1 350 m. 

T / D S. Veselovsky and Parkhomenko. Issued by offices "Alians" (May, 14 1915)

 Scene and Director: S. Veselovsky. 

Actors: Ge-De-Gayam (Gaia Assi, circus actress). N. Saltykov (actor Yevgeniy Tolsky), Lihomsky (Andrey, his brother), Galima (Emerita, Negro), Oriedo, Lyubomirsky, Kuznetsov, Nezhdanov. 

*ЖЕНЩИНА-САТАНА* Драма, 5 ч., 1 350 м. 

Т/Д С. Веселовский и Пархо­ менко. Вып. конторы «Алиано> (14/У 1915)

Сцен, и реж. С. Веселовский. 

Акте­ ры: Ге-Де-Гаям (Гея Асси. цирковая арти­стка). Н. Салтыков (артист Евгений Тольский), Лихомский (Андрей, его брат), Галима (Эмеритта, негритянка), Ориедо, Любомирский, Кузнецов, Нежданов. 

After Emma's assistance in writing the scenario, during the Spring of 1915, Veselovsky created his interesting attempt on Russian soil an intricate American adventure film "Satan's Woman" about the circus actress, Gaia Assi, who killed off her lovers. Emma played the part as Emerita, the maid and confidante of the murdering actress. As an African-American woman appearing in a Imperial Russian, Emma caused huge sensation across the country. 

Several months later, she connected with comedic actor-director B. Kramskoy, and appeared in his latest farce film, "Feet Up!" however a the films scenario and release date have been lost. Released through the Kinolent Company:

*FEET UP* Farce, materials and equipment. unknown

The office of "Kinolent".

Scenes and director: B. Kramskoy

Actors: B. Kramskoy, Galima, Oryedo, Anon, Tikhomirov

*НОГИ ВВЕРХ* Фарс, мтр. неизв. 

Контора «Кинолента».

Сцен, и реж. Б. Крамской. 

Актеры: Б. Крамской, Галима, Ориедо, Анона, Ти­хомиров

According to Emma, she later appeared in several more unknown propagandist films during the Soviet period, sometime between 1922-25. 

Coretti Utina in Kiev (1911)

Kiev, Ukraine (July 25-31, 1911)

Apollo Variety Garden Theater (1911)

During the summer of 1911, Afro-American entertainer, Coretti Utina (Коретти де-Утина) performed romance songs in English and broken Russian (according to the advertissement) at the Apollo Variety Garden-Theatre alongside other popular entertainers. 

*Unfortunately the theatre was destroyed during the German occupation of Ukraine (1941-43).

Galima "Black Nightingale" in Mariupol (Ukraine)

Mariupol, Ukraine (April 15, 1912)

Mariupol (1910)

Theatre Uvarova:

"On Sunday, the 'nail' of the program was the output of Miss Galima. She performed several numbers in a voice that imitated that of a flute or ocarina. The performer takes skillful notes representing the imitation of instruments. But most of all, the audience loved Galima's dancing, particularly her 'Algerian' dance which she performed with gracefulness and plasticity! Afterwards, not without success, she did her usual repertoire in Russian romance songs."

**The articles above her successful reviews in Moscow, mentioned the tragic sinking of the Titanic**

Galima "Black Nightingale" at the Petrovsky Yacht Club

Voronezh, Russia (July 11, 1913)

Petrovsky Yacht Club (1900?)

During the warm Russian summer of 1913, Emma Harris, under her stage name Galima "The Black Nightingale", entertained at the Petrovsky Yacht Club, built by Tsar Peter I during his major campaigns on the Ukraine in the 1690s. 

"The negress Galima, known as the Black Nightingale delivered a great public performance at the Yacht Club on July 11th. After her perfect delivery in a voice similar to that of the ocarina & flute, Galima (in her pretty Oriental accent) sang Russian romance songs. This was followed by dancing, of which she loves so much. Her movements were smooth and light, somehow her feet barely touching the floor. Her body, burning with African passion, wriggled like a snake and twisted and turned at a dizzying pace. After being loudly applauded by the audience, Galima was forced to return several times to the stage."

Source: http://bvf.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=669599&page=2