Valentina Serova (composer)

Valentina Semyonova Serova (maiden name Bergman) (1846 – June 26, 1924) was a Russian composer of Jewish descent. Her family had converted to Reformed Protestantism before she was born. Early life Serova’s father Simon Bergman was a German-Jewish merchant who lived in Warsaw and operated a jewelry shop; her mother Augusta Hudschon (Augustina Hudson) was a German-Jew as well born in Amsterdam. They moved to Saint-Petersburg from Warsaw in the late 1830-s. She studied briefly at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Anton Rubinstein but left to study with the composer and critic Alexander Serov, known both for his writings and his successful first opera Judith. Introduced through a shared friend, she married Serov in 1863 and in January 1865 their son Valentin Serov was born. Valentin would grow up to become a famous painter, renowned for his portraits. The Power of the Fiend Alexander Serov died of a heart attack in January 1871, and Valentina completed the last act of his third and final opera, The Power of the Fiend. She used his sketches and her memory of what Alexander had played to her to finish the work. The composer N.F. Solovyov helped her with some of the instrumentation and