Age 47; Russia, Moscow

Fyodor Khramtsov was born in Moscow on June 17^th, 1955. He was a second child of five. His father was a chauffer. The parents wanted their son to learn to play the accordion, but there were no open classes in this instrument at the music school, so Fyodor ended up in Aleksey Alekseevich Volchansky’s trumpet class. The teacher became like Fyodor’s second father, and the boy tried his best to emulate him. Later Fyodor studied at the Ippolitov-Kharitonov music institute, then the Moscow Conservatory, where he met me, his future wife. For many years he was in the orchestra at the Stanislavsky & Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theater, then later began with the New Opera Theater from its very founding. He was with ‘Nord-Ost’ from the very first show. Fyodor Ivanovich Khramtsov is survived by his 27-year-old son, Alexander, and 20-year-old daughter, Irina. He has two grandchildren: five year-old Mikhail and two and one-half year-old Masha.

I was his wife, a computer programmer. We had recently separated, but we still maintained good relations, and we were in constant touch.

I met him the first time in the subway. I knew a friend of his. A year after our wedding, our first son, Sasha (Alexander), appeared. I was in still a student, and Fyodor never let me quit the institute. He worked and did odd jobs, and only after I had graduated did he enter the conservatory. That is how we lived: first I went to the institute, mother went to work, and Fyodor took Sasha, grumbling and tied up in some string, to his mother’s. Or they would come to my mother at work – she was the head accountant at RONO. He would come in, and mom would be in a meeting. He would tell the office workers to take the child and watch him awhile. While he was studying at the conservatory, I was working all the time. Our daughter was born only after Fedya (Fyodor) finished there, in 1982. He spoiled her a lot, when she was little. Only he could bathe her. I would have to wait for him to come home after a show, and he would get angry if we started without him. Irina was a copy of him: Fedya would say that Sasha was the experimental version, while little Irka was the proven one.

Fedya was a very sociable person, companionable, and ready for anything. In his youth he dreamed of owning a car. When we bought a ‘kopeck’ sedan, he was so happy, it was a dream come true! He worked on it a lot, and did everything himself. Sasha grew up, all the time in the garage with his father. The first time they rebuilt the engine, now that was something to remember! Everyone together, they even dragged me into it. At the theater he helped a lot of people fix their cars, and we would kid him: “Fedya, if anything happens, you’ve got a second profession to fall back on.” When he brought home a car from Japan, he sold it in less than a year: it just was not interesting, since there was never anything to fix on it.

Fedya like working on ‘Nord-Ost’ a lot, and went to rehearsals with gusto. When we found out that they had been taken hostage, at first I hoped that Fedya was still at New Opera. We tried to call him. Our phone was never silent – friends and relatives were all asking: “Where’s Fedya?” We did not know anything. He was finally able to call a friend, and his friend called us. Sasha went to Melnikov right away, and our daughter who had been staying with friends went over there at two in the morning. Fedya finally got through to me, and said that everything was awful, that they were setting up bombs – he pretty much said farewell. He asked me not to remember the bad times, and I told him not to worry, all would be fine.

The last time he called was on Friday, at five in the morning. He said that they were demanding a meeting, and that everyone must go out and demonstrate for an end to the war in Chechnya. He asked me to call Anatoly Semkin, to find a replacement for him at the Mayakovsky Theater. “I’m not going to make it,” he said. That is the kind of man he was. He said everything was looking bad, and there was no hope for escape, but that we had raised two good children, and he was very proud of them.

«Filarmonik» #4, 2002

Here is a poem about Fyodor.

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