Vitaliy Vladasovich Grachev or Vitaliy Vladasovych Grachov, known professionally as Vitas ( ; stylised in all caps; born 19 February 1979), is a Latvia-born Ukrainian and Russian singer. Vitas is known for his falsetto and his eclectic musical style, which incorporates elements of operatic pop, techno, dance, classical, jazz, and folk.
Vitas became popular in Russia and other Eastern European countries in the early 2000s and also achieved success in Asia, including China, in 2005. He won the ZD Awards and participated in many Russian and European music festivals, including the festival “Christmas Meetings of Alla Pugacheva” and others. He performed in a duet with Demis Roussos and Lucio Dalla.
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,Source: Shanghai Daily and employs a backing band named DIVA during live performances.DIVA website (Russian)
Early life Vitaliy Vladasovich Grachev was born in Daugavpils, which was then in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, on 19 February 1979. He moved with his parents to Ukraine, where he was raised in Odesa. In an interview to Ukrainian website Fakty in 2012, Grachev claimed that Vitas was his official first name on his birth certificate. At the age of 16, he officially changed his first name to the name's Ukrainian version Vitaliy.
Vitas has Russian, Lithuanian and Ashkenazi Jewish roots. He is the son of costume designer Lilia Mihailovna Gracheva who was Russian and musician Vladas Arkadevich Grachev-Marantzman who was of ethnic Lithuanian and Ashkenazi Jewish origin. His paternal grandfather, Arkadiy Davydovich Marantzman, who sang in an army choir, was Ashkenazi Jewish while his paternal grandmother was of ethnic Lithuanian descent. Arkadiy Marantzman served in the Soviet army during World War II. Vitas showed an interest in music from an early age; his grandfather taught him to play the accordion at the age of 5. He later said that he had composed at least 1,000 songs by the age of 12. He attended an art school in Odesa from the age of seven, and appeared in various theatrical productions as a teenager.
He took the name Vitas in his teen years as he found "Vitaliy Grachev" sounded too long. He regularly clashed with his father about his late night rehearsing habits. His father threatened to report him to the police. At the age of 21, Vitas and his 15-year-old girlfriend and future wife Svetlana crossed the border into Russia on a train without Svetlana having proper documentation. They lived in poverty before Vitas received public attention for his music.
Career
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 sold leftover bread from stores on the street as well as offering his 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 that he move to Moscow, which he had already considered in 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 Svetlana left Odesa.
With Pudovkin, Vitas starting working on his debut for the Russian audience. 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 naked. 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."Vitas: Artist Who You Have Been Waiting For" 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: Bit Bombit
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.
Incidents Vitas is also known in Russia for several high-profile incidents, following the investigations of which he had to face criminal and administrative liability. For example, in 2003, a criminal case was initiated against him under Part 4 of Article 222 of the Russian Criminal Code (illegal arms trafficking). However, according to the prosecutor, the case against Grachev was closed due to his active repentance.
Traffic accident