The Alexandrov Ensemble choir (established Moscow 1926) is the choir of the Alexandrov Ensemble.
It has for most of its history been a male-voice choir of tenors and basses, based in Moscow and directed and conducted by Alexander V. Alexandrov from 1926 to 1946, by his son Boris A. Alexandrov from 1946 to 1987, and by various directors up to the present. It has always consisted of Soviet and then Russian Red Army personnel, and has been held to represent that army at home and abroad. Since the 1990s, female army personnel have occasionally been included in the choir as sopranos. Since 2007 boy sopranos and altos from the associated choir school have joined the choir for some of the time.
On December 25, 2016, a plane containing 92 people, including over 60 members of the choir, crashed while en route to Latakia, Syria.
"Dark Eyes" (Russian: Очи чёрные, romanized: Óči čjórnye; transl. "Black Eyes") is a well-known and popular Russian romance folk song. The lyrics were written by the Russian-Ukrainian poet and writer Yevhen Hrebinka. The first publication of the poem was in Hrebinka's own Russian translation in Literaturnaya Gazeta on 17 January 1843.
1. Black eyes, passionate eyes,
Burning and beautiful eyes!
How I love you, how I fear you,
It seems I met you in an unlucky hour!
2. Oh, not for nothing are you darker than the deep!
I see mourning for my soul in you,
I see a triumphant flame in you:
A poor heart immolated in it.
3.But I am not sad, I am not sorrowful,
My fate is soothing to me:
All that is best in life that God gave us,
In sacrifice I returned to the fiery eyes!
