Vera de Bosset


Vera de Bosset Stravinsky was a Russian American dancer and artist. She is better known as the mistress and, ultimately, second wife of the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, who married her in 1940.

Life

Vera de Bosset was born Vera Bosse, the daughter of Eduard Bosse and Hedwig von Ruckteschel. Both parents were Baltic German nobility. She was sent to boarding school in Moscow, where she learned how to play piano. Vera allegedly changed her name to the French "Bosset" to hide her German ancestry. She was the only one of her family to do so.
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 Katerina Nossenko and had four children. Stravinsky and Vera began an affair which led to her leaving her husband. From then until the death of Katerina from tuberculosis in March 1939, Stravinsky led a double life, spending most of his time with his wife and children and the rest with Vera. Katerina reportedly bore her husband's infidelity "with a mixture of magnanimity, bitterness, and compassion".
In September 1939, Stravinsky arrived in America to give the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Vera followed in January 1940; they were married in Bedford, Massachusetts on March 9.
After Stravinsky's death Vera lived on 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 cemetery.
Her survivors include nephews, nieces and more remote relatives, who live in Europe, the United States and Chile.