Igor Stravinsky

📍Dvortsovy Prospekt, Lomonosov (Oranienbaum), Leningrad Oblast 198412, Russia

“I was born Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky on the 17th of June 1882 in Oranienbaum on the Gulf of Finland, the son of Fyodor Stravinsky, a bass at the Imperial Opera in St Petersburg. The Oranienbaum dacha was the summer home; St Petersburg and its musical culture were the winter education. My father's voice and the Imperial Opera's repertoire were my first musical world, and Rimsky-Korsakov became my teacher after my father died. I left Russia after the Revolution and spent the rest of my life in Paris, Los Angeles, and finally New York — becoming the century's most cosmopolitan composer, reinventing myself with each decade. The Rite of Spring caused a riot at its Paris premiere in 1913. The Oranienbaum childhood, with the Gulf of Finland and the palace park, was the Russia I carried into exile.”

Sources: Walsh, S. Stravinsky: A Creative Spring (1999), Knopf; Craft, R. Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship (1994), Vanderbilt University Press