Anna Marly - Early Life

Early Life

Marly (née Anna Yurievna Betulinskaya) was born into a Russian noble family living in Saint Petersburg during the October Revolution. Her father belonged to an aristocratic family connected by family ties to poet Mikhail Lermontov, philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev and Pyotr Stolypin. Her mother (née Maria Mikhailovna Alferaki) was a descendant of the Greek-Russian noble family of Alferaki who lived in Taganrog in the Alferaki Palace before moving to Saint Petersburg. Yuriy Betulinski was arrested and executed before Marly's first birthday. The rest of the family, along with a number of other White Russian refugees, fled across the Finnish border shortly after this, eventually settling in the French town of Menton.

In her youth Marly had worked as a ballet dancer in Monte Carlo, and been taught by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. By the age of 17 she was performing her own compositions in the cabaret clubs of Paris, it was at this time that she adopted the name "Marly", supposedly selecting it from a telephone directory, her original name, "Betoulinsky", being too difficult for French speakers to pronounce.