kids encyclopedia robot

Vitas facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
Quick facts for kids
Vitas
VVitas.jpg
Vitas in 2002
Background information
Native name
Витас
Birth name Vitaly Vladasovich Grachev
Also known as
  • Vitalik
  • Vitas
Born (1979-02-19) 19 February 1979 (age 45)
Daugavpils, Latvian SSR, Soviet Union
Origin Odesa, Ukraine
Genres
Occupation(s)
  • Singer
  • songwriter
Years active 2000–present
Labels
  • Iceberg Music
  • CD Land
  • Квадро-Диск
  • CICAC
  • KHAM
  • Gemini Sun Records
  • Universal Music Taiwan
  • Никитин
  • Media Land
  • Creative Media
  • Monatomic Music
  • 反正靠谱
Associated acts
  • D.I.V.A. (Д.И.В.А.)
  • Aleksandra Pakhmutova
  • Alexander Alexandrovich Morozov (artist)
  • Lyubasha
  • Nappy Roots

Vitaliy Vladasovich Grachev or Vitaliy Vladasovych Grachov, known professionally as Vitas (Russian: Витас, IPA: [ˈvʲitəs]; stylised as VITAS), is a Russian singer. Vitas is known for his unique falsetto and his eclectic musical style, which incorporates elements of operatic pop, techno, dance, classical, jazz, and folk.

Having achieved prominence through Russian television in the early 2000s, Vitas crossed into Asian markets in 2005. Much of his recognition outside Russia and Asia came in the 2010s, when songs such as "Opera #2" and "The 7th Element" (both from his 2001 debut album Philosophy of Miracle) and "Smile!" (from his 2002 album of the same name) achieved viral success; the unusual music videos for "Opera #2" and "The 7th Element" have been cited as the most prominent examples of this.

Vitas has performed with entertainment labels such as Universal Music Group, and has toured extensively in several countries. He designs his own stage costumes, and employs a backing band named DIVA during live performances.

Early life

Vitaly Vladasovich Grachev was born in Daugavpils, which was then in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, on February 19, 1979. He soon moved with his parents to Ukraine, where he was raised in Odessa.

Vitas has Russian, Latvian and Jewish roots origin. He is the son of Lilia Mihailovna Gracheva who was Russian, and Vladas Arkadevich Grachev-Marantzman who was half Latvian and Jewish origin. His paternal grandfather, Arkadiy Davidovich Marantzman, was Ashkenazi Jewish while his paternal grandmother was of Latvian descent. He showed an interest in music from an early age; his grandfather taught him to play the accordion at the age of 5 and wrote his first song, "Rain in Tbilisi", when he was 6. He later said that he had composed at least 1,000 songs by the age of 12. He attended an art school in Odessa from the age of seven, and appeared in various theatrical productions as a teenager. His dean at the art school in Odessa reportedly hailed him as "a gift from God".

Career

Автограф Витаса
Vitas' signature

1999–2005: Breakthrough in Russia, Philosophy of Miracle and Songs of My Mother

After being rejected from a musical college in his native Odesa, his family did not have the money to send him to a private institution. As a result, Vitas, already using the name as a pseudonym, started performing at night clubs. He initially started his career as a Michael Jackson tribute act, but also performed parodies and his own songs. He also made money, amongst others, by selling leftover bread from stores on the street as well as offering services as a photographer. At night clubs, he had acts involving dancing, singing, comedy and magic tricks, including spoon bending. He worked as an actor in an experimental theatre. He applied to perform with his own songs at the 1997 edition of Chervona ruta festival, but was rejected as his repertoire lacked songs in Ukrainian. In 1999, Odesan regional television station Elan shot a music video for his song "Opera #1", which they recorded in Odesa.

During one of his night club performances, where he performed "Opera #2", he was spotted by a Russian producer, who recommended Vitas going to Moscow. Vitas had seriously considering going to Moscow for a while around 1998–1999. During a play at the experimental theatre, he was spotted by producer Sergey Pudovkin, whom he gifted a cassette of his song. A week later, Vitas and his girlfriend Svetlana left Odesa.

With Pudovkin, Vitas starting working on his debut for the Russian audience. In order to make money and sustain himself and his girlfriend, he started working for youth channel TV-6. They recorded a music video for "Opera #2", in which Vitas portrayed an eccentric lonely man with fish gills who lives in a bathtub with jars of fish and plays the accordion. The music video premiered in December 2000 and received wide public attention. Vitas started performing the song with artificial gills, which let the Russian media compare him to Ichthyander, a character in the novel Amphibian Man.

On February 27, 2001, Vitas premiered his solo concert show "Opera #...", in an abridged form, at the "Russia" Concert Hall in Moscow. Performed as a teaser for the first leg of his "Philosophy of Miracle" tour, the show was filmed by TV-6 and later broadcast as part of the music program "Наша музыка". Although not well documented, official sources recall that the tour began on April 7, 2001, presumably in Naro-Fominsk. Other sources confirm that the tour had already started by March 2001. During that first tour, Vitas performed not only in concert halls, but also on TV shows, festivals, stadiums, casino halls and nightclubs. In March 2002, Vitas made his first tour in the United States of America.

On March 29, 2002, Vitas premiered the second leg of his "Philosophy of Miracle" concert tour with a concert at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow. The concert was filmed by Channel One Russia and later released on DVD.

In late 2002, Vitas received an invitation from Lucio Dalla, the composer of "Caruso", to perform this song together with him at the "Sanremo in Moscow" concert in the State Kremlin Palace on November 23, 2002. Mr. Dalla then invited Vitas to come to Rome to take part in the rehearsals of Toska, a modern version of Puccini's opera.

In dedication to his mother who died in 2001, Vitas released two albums: "Mama" and "The Songs of My Mother". The latter included classic Soviet songs which were the favourite of Vitas' late mother. During the process of recording the album, Vitas befriended Soviet and Russian composer Alexandra Pakhmutova, who featured in his music video for her song "The Bird of Happiness".

On October 21, 2003, Vitas ended his first concert tour "Philosophy of Miracle" with its last gig in Kaliningrad.

On November 1, 2003, Vitas presented his second concert tour with the show "The Songs of My Mother" in the "Russia" Concert Hall in Moscow. Compared to the flamboyant nature of his previous Philosophy of Miracle tour, The Songs of My Mother was more conservative, drawing on classic Russian songs. From 2004 to 2006, Vitas' management, the "Pudovkin" Production Center continued "The Songs of My Mother" tour in Russia and the United States, Germany, Kazakhstan, Israel and the Baltic states.

In addition to his singing career, Vitas also starred in a murder mystery television series called "Сволочь ненаглядная" ("Beloved Scoundrel"), in which he played a pop singer with an unusually high voice. He also starred in a comedy called Crazy Day.

2006–2014: Asian success, Return Home and films

In June 2006, Vitas was invited by China Central Television to take part in a grand event entitled The Year of Russia in China in Beijing. Vitas performed two songs, "The Star" and "Opera #2" during the event, marking the beginning of his popularity in China.

Vitas' Return Home tour, beginning in 2006, had a conservative atmosphere similar to the Songs of My Mother tour. The concert performed in Saint Petersburg on 4 March 2007 was later released on DVD on Vitas' website, as well as officially in some countries, albeit with many songs removed. The full concert in Moscow was later released on DVD.

In October 2007, Vitas was signed with now-defunct American label Gemini Sun Records. Gemini Sun released the Audio Visual Connect Series Vitas compilation CD + DVD set featuring eight music videos with the corresponding songs also on audio CD, in addition to a bonus audio track. In 2008, Vitas also released "Light of A New Day", a 40-minute track of non-lyrical vocalization and instrumentation. The song is available as a free download on his website.

The Sleepless Night tour included concerts in China and more elaborate presentations than the more conservative Return Home program. Vitas performed his Return Home concert in Bucharest, Romania on 25 February 2009. The concert was broadcast on the Romanian TVR2 and TVRi television networks, achieving their highest ratings in twelve months. A benefit concert, with Vitas performing "The Star", was held on 12 May 2009 in Sichuan province in memory of the victims of the previous year's earthquake there; a song known as "Mommy and Son" was released in late October 2009 in remembrance of the victims. It was the very first title track of the Mommy and Son album (released 1 September 2011), which included new songs, such as "C'est La Vie" (French for "Such is life"), "Once More", "Let the Father Teach!", "Young Rook" and others.

Vitas played the role of Gude in the Chinese film Mulan, which premiered in Beijing on 16 November 2009. He recorded music for the film's soundtrack.

In early 2011, Vitas performed a series of seven Sleepless Night concerts in New York City, Toronto, Chicago, Miami, Vancouver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Later that year, he played the role of Bolshevik Comintern official Grigori Voitinsky in the Chinese propaganda film The Founding of a Party. He also starred with Huang Shengyi in the musical A Night to Be a Star. In March 2011, Vitas' concert tour "Mommy and Son" started in several cities of Russia. His large-scale concert at the Palace of Arts "Ukraina" in Kyiv in March 2012 was broadcast in Ukraine's main TV channels and later released in DVD. In 2013 he brought the tour to Germany, performing in several cities.

In 2012, Vitas was a guest star on several Russian talk shows, including Let Them Talk, where he was interviewed for the first time on Russian television after hiding himself from the press for about a decade.

2015–present: viral videos and Bit bombit

Витас 2015
Vitas in 2015.

In June 2015, Vitas' unusual music video for his 2001 song "The 7th Element", which featured him as a kind of humanoid alien performing on the 2001 edition of Little Blue Light, became popular after it was posted on Reddit. It sparked memes throughout the internet, where it received a considerable amount of parodies. It reached its peak search on Google in 2017 when the meme became popular in Brazil as Facebook pages such as South America Memes were responsible for memes using footage from his performance of the song at the Songs of My Mother tour. On 5 October, he thanked the pages for his popularity.

In 2019, Vitas released his fifteenth album Bit Bombit. He celebrated his 20th anniversary as an artist starting with a new concert tour in April 2019 in Moscow, while appearing at Evening Urgant on the day of his 40th birthday. He collaborated with Australian musician and DJ Timmy Trumpet on the song "The King" and performed with him at the Belgian rave festival Tomorrowland. In August 2020, Vitas' 20th anniversary EP OPERA20 was released in China. The album contained songs in English, Russian, and Chinese, as well as a collaboration with Chinese singer Elvis Wang. 1,000 limited edition vinyl copies were issued.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, Vitas' touring abroad stopped and for a while, he solely performed in Russia. Since March 2022, he has withdrawn from performing publicly and focused mostly on his family.

Personal life

Vitas is a dual Ukrainian–Russian citizen, possessing two passports.

He married his longterm girlfriend Svetlana Grankovska in 2006 in Odesa in a private ceremony solely attended by family members. In 2008, their first daughter Alla was born, followed by their son Maksim in 2015. In 2021, their third child, a daughter named Alisa, was born.

During the early 2000s, Vitas was often guarded in interactions with the media and seldom gave interviews. His producer Sergey Pudovkin actively tried to block opportunities for interviewers and journalists to talk to Vitas. In 2003, Channel One Russia show Good Morning held a rare interview with Vitas on his career. Vitas became more open towards the press in the early 2010s, holding his first in-depth interview in January 2012 on the Russian talk show Let Them Talk while showing his wife and daughter publicly for the first time.

Subsequently, he appeared on the Channel One Russia show Everybody Is At Home.

Backing band

Current members

  • Aleksandr Gruzdev – guitar, saxophone, backing vocals (2001–present)
  • Maxim Musatov – keyboards, backing vocals (2019–present)
  • Aleksandr Illin – bass guitar, backing vocals (2016–present)
  • Yaroslav Andreev – drums (2012–present)

Former members

  • [unknown] – guitar, backing vocals (2014–2015)
  • Vasiliy Musatov – keyboards (2004–2019)
  • Ilya "G.IL.V" Grebenyuk – keyboards (2001–2003)
  • Aleksey Rostov – keyboards (2003)
  • Andrey Artemov – bass guitar, backing vocals (2007–2015)
  • Rashit Kyamov – bass guitar, backing vocals (2001–2007, 2015–2016)
  • Rushan Harryasov – drums (2001–2012)

Discography

Studio albums

Russian English Year
Философия чуда Philosophy of Miracle 2001
Улыбнись Smile! 2002
Мама Mama 2003
Песни моей мамы The Songs of My Mother 2003
Поцелуй длиною в вечность A Kiss as Long as Eternity 2004
Возвращение домой Return Home 2006
Криком журавлиным. Возвращение домой, Часть 2 Crane's Crying: Return Home, Part 2 2007
Хиты ХХ века 20th Century Hits 2008
** Audio Visual Connect Series: Vitas (CD + DVD) 2008
Скажи, что ты любишь Say You Love 2009
Шедевры трех веков Masterpieces of Three Centuries 2010
Романсы Romances 2011
Мама и Сын Mother and Son 2011
Только ты. История моей любви, Часть 1 Only You: My Love Story, Part 1 2013
Я подарю тебе весь мир. История моей любви, Часть 2 I'll Give You the World: My Love Story, Part 2 2014
** Come Just For You! 2016
** Made in China 2016
Бит бомбит Bit Bombit 2019

DVDs

Russian English Year
Витас в Кремле Vitas at the Kremlin 2002
Песни моей мамы The Songs Of My Mother 2003
Лучшее от Витаса на DVD The Best from Vitas on DVD 2007
Возвращение Домой в Санкт-Петербурге Return Home in Saint Petersburg 2007
Возвращение домой в Москва Return Home in Moscow 2007
Бессонная ночь Петербург Sleepless Night in Saint Petersburg 2010
Две столицы Two Capitals 2011
Лучшее от Витаса на DVD (2) The Best from Vitas on DVD (2) 2011
Мама и сын Mommy and Son 2013
Лучшее от Витаса на DVD (3) The Best from Vitas on DVD (3) 2014

Singles and EPs

Original English Year
Опера #2 Opera #2 2001
Good Bye ** 2001
Свет Нового Дня Light of a New Day 2008
真童话 Fairy Tale 2010
That Song (Remix of 7th Element by Drangabeats) ** 2015
Делю любовь на доли I Divide Love Into Shares 2015
Roll With The Beat ** 2018
Opera #2 (HD) ** 2018
Back to the Stars ** 2020
За ней After Her 2020
无词歌 Song Without Words 2020
向着太阳

(with Elvis Wang)

Towards the Sun 2020
"The King"
(with Timmy Trumpet)
** 2020
OPERA20 ** 2020

Videos

Original English Year
Опера No.2 Opera #2 2000
Опера No.1 Opera #1 2001
Дождь в Тбилиси Rain in Tbilisi 2001
Блаженный Гуру Blessed Guru 2001
Улыбнись Smile 2002
Звезда Star 2003
Мама Mama 2003
Птица счастья The Bird of Happiness 2004
Поцелуй длиною в вечность Kiss As Long As Eternity 2004
Берега России Shores of Russia 2005
Lucia Di Lammermoor Lucia Di Lammermoor 2006
Криком журавлиным Crane's Crying 2006
Ямайка Jamaica 2007
La Donna è Mobile The woman is fickle 2009
Люби меня Love Me 2009
Раз, два, три One, Two, Three 2011
Фронтовики War Veterans 2012
Мне бы в небо (Дуэт с Ксеноной) I'd Like To Go Up To Sky (feat. Ksenona Ksenia) 2012
Я подарю тебе мир I'll Give You The World 2013
Делю любовь на доли I Divide Love Into Shares 2015
Made in China (feat. Sergey Pudovkin) ** 2016
Roll With The Beat (feat. Nappy Roots) ** 2018
Подари мне любовь Give Me Love 2018
Симфоническая Symphonic 2018
Делала Did 2019
Back to the Stars ** 2020

Concert programs

Original English Year
Опера No.... Opera #... 2001
Философия чуда или Улыбнись Philosophy of Miracle or Smile 2002–2003
Песни моей мамы The Songs of My Mother 2003–2006
Возвращение домой Return Home 2006–2009
Бессонная ночь Sleepless Night 2009–2012
Мама и сын Mommy and Son 2011–2013
Скажи, что ты любишь Say You Love 2011
15 лет с вами. История моей любви 15 Years With You. My Love Story 2014–2017
Come Just For You! ** 2016
Подари мне любовь Give Me Love 2018–present
20 Years ** 2019
OPERA20 ** TBA

Filmography

Film

Year Title Role
2002 Сволочь ненаглядная
2005 Сумасшедший день
2009 Mulan Gude
2011 The Founding of a Party Grigori Voitinsky
2012 A Night to Be a Star Himself

Awards and achievements

Year Category Recording
2001, 2002, 2003 Best selling single Russian Record Prize "Opera #2"
2001 Komsomolskaya Pravda and Internet Survey "Forum 2001" Musical Discovery of the Year
2000, 2001, 2002 Three-time-laureate of the festivals "The Song of the Year" (2000, 2001, 2002)
2001, 2002 Two-time-laureate of the People Prize "Golden Gramophone" "Opera #2", "Smile!"
2001, 2002, 2003 Three-time-laureate of the Musical Prize "PODIUM" for the most stylish achievements in pop music
2001, 2002, 2003 Russian "People's HIT" Prize "Opera #2", "Smile!", "The Star"
2001, 2003 Radio station "HIT FM" Prize "100 Per Cent HIT"
2002 National Musical Prize "Ovation" Soloist of the Year
2004 Russian Internet portal AFISHA.COM
2007 Order of Service to the Arts
2007 Best Album – NewsMusic Poll "Crane's Crying"
2011 International Song Writers Contest Winner, 3rd place Music Video Category for "Opera #2". Also won second place in People's Choice vote. "Opera #2"

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Vitas para niños

kids search engine
Vitas Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.