On Thursday, 7 June, hundreds came to St Petersburg to the Arkady Raikin Variety Theatre to participate in the secular memorial service for Russian pop music legend and People’s Artist of the RSFSR Eduard Khil, who died on 4 June in the 78th year of his life.
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Hundreds of people attended the memorial service at the theatre, many of them being over forty. Almost everyone brought some kind of flowers. Many of those who came to bid farewell to the singer were familiar with his work since the 1960s, as they grew up with Khil’s songs.
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Khil’s admirers carried flowers to the famous Tolstoy House on Rubinshteyn Street, where the singer lived.
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Earlier, an Orthodox service was held at the Church of the Mother of God of Smolensk. After the secular memorial service for Khil took place at the Raikin Theatre, his burial took place at the Smolensky Cemetery.
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Family and friends sent many messages of condolence. For example, President Vladimir Putin wrote Khil’s family, saying that his name would always live in the popular memory, as he was a “richly gifted, amazingly bright, and positive person in an epoch in the history of our people’s music”. In the photo above, we see Zoe Pravdina, the widow of Eduard Khil, at the secular memorial service at the Raikin Theatre.
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Singer and songwriter Aleksandr Rozenbaum spoke at the secular memorial service for Eduard Khil at the Raikin Theatre.
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7 June 2012
Voice of Russia World Service
