Vera de Bosset Stravinsky (January 7, 1889[1] – September 17, 1982) was an American
dancer and artist. She is better known as the second wife of composer
Igor Stravinsky, whom she married in 1940 after having been in an adulterous affair with him since July 1921.
Life
Vera de Bosset was born Vera Bosse, the daughter of Eduard Bosse (1854–1927)[2] and Hedwig von Ruckteschel (1866–1938).[3] Both parents were
Baltic German nobility.[4] She was sent to boarding school in Moscow, where she learned how to play piano.[5] Vera allegedly changed her name to the French "de Bosset" to hide her German ancestry. She was the only one of her family to do so.[citation needed]
Stravinsky met Vera in 1921. She was a dancer and the wife of the painter and stage designer
Serge Sudeikin. Stravinsky was then married to his cousin
Yekaterina Nosenko and had four children. Stravinsky and Vera began an affair which led to her leaving her husband. From then until the death of Yekaterina from pneumonia in March 1939, Stravinsky led a double life, spending most of his time with his wife and children and the rest with Vera.[citation needed] Yekaterina reportedly bore her husband's infidelity "with a mixture of magnanimity, bitterness, and compassion".[6]
After Stravinsky's death in 1971, Vera continued to live in the New York apartment they had bought shortly before his death. She died in 1982 and is buried with Stravinsky in Venice's
Isola di San Michele.
Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship, Craft, Robert, Nashville, Vanderbilt University Press. 1994.
ISBN0-8265-1258-5
von Ruckteschell Family papers, taken care of by Georg Bosse, Kentucky, USA.
^In "Stravinsky: Discoveries and Memories" (Craft, Robert, Naxos Books, 2013,
ISBN978-1-84379-753-1, p. 154), Robert Craft recalls that "after an emotionally and physically exhausting day...Vera abruptly announced that she could not keep up, and that she was four years older than the dates on her passport." This would mean her true birth date was 1/7/1885, and her age at death 97.
^Die Nachkommen des Kantors, Schulmeisters und Hilfspredigers an der St. Petri-Gemeinde in St. Petersburg Sebastian Bosse (1697-1775), in: Baltische Ahnen- und Stammtafeln Sonderheft 12 (Köln 1976), p. 10
^Joseph, Charles M.. 2001. Stravinsky Inside Out. New Haven: Yale University Press.
ISBN978-0-300-07537-3.
^White, Eric Walter in "Stravinsky, Igor (Fyodorovich)" in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The. (London: Macmillan, 1985), vol. 18, p.254.