Chaliapin met his first wife, the Italian ballerina Iola Tornagi, at the Russian Private Opera of Savva Mamontov. And he was so captivated by her that at the dress rehearsal of "Eugene Onegin" in Gremin's aria he allowed himself to digress from the text: "Onegin, I swear on the sword, I love Tornagi madly..." — having amused the troupe a lot. Iola Ignatievna, a woman of extraordinary spiritual generosity and charm, will become the mother of Chaliapin's six children, and, despite her undoubted artistic gift, will leave the stage for the sake of her family. At the age of 33, Fyodor Ivanovich gets closer to Maria Petzold, torn between two houses in Moscow and St. Petersburg and two women, each of whom he loved in his own way. The fictionalized narrative of Victor Petelin, the famous biographer of F.I. Chaliapin, focuses on the personal life of a Russian genius who has not escaped secular gossip.