Full Name Carolina Codina Name Lina Prokofiev | Role Singer Parents Juan Codina, Olga Codina | |
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Children Oleg Prokofiev, Sviatoslav Prokofiev Albums Peter & The Wolf / Cinderella Similar People | ||
Peter And The Wolf, Op. 67
Lina Prokofiev (born Carolina Codina, 21 October 1897 – 3 January 1989) was a Spanish singer and the wife of Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. She spent eight years in the Soviet Gulag.
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Life
Carolina Codina was born in Madrid on 21 October 1897 to Olga (née Nemïsskaya) and Juan Codina. Both of her parents were singers, her mother from Ukraine and her father from Spain. Carolina traveled with her parents to Russia when she was young. The family lived in Switzerland before sailing across the Atlantic on the Statendam to New York City in 1907. Lina graduated from Brooklyn's Public School No. 3; the graduation was held at the nearby Commercial High School on 24 June 1913.
She worked for a month as an assistant to Russian socialist Catherine Breshkovsky in 1919.
She married Prokofiev in 1923. Her stage name was Lina Llubera.
By around 1943, Sergei's relationship with the younger writer Mira Mendelson (1915–1968) had finally led to his separation from his wife Lina, although they never divorced. Prokofiev tried to persuade Lina and their sons to accompany him as evacuees out of Moscow, but Lina opted to stay. On 20 February 1948, Lina was arrested for 'espionage', as she tried to send money to her mother in Spain. She was sentenced to 20 years, but was eventually released after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953 and in 1974 left the Soviet Union.
Lina outlived her estranged husband by many years, dying in London on 3 January 1989. Royalties from her late husband's music provided her with a modest income. Their sons Sviatoslav (1924–2010), an architect, and Oleg (1928–1998), an artist, painter, sculptor and poet, dedicated a large part of their lives to the promotion of their father's life and work.