Focusing on the personality of Feodor Ivanovic Shalyapin, the famous baritone, the film has two main topics: the family life of Shalyapin and the current daily life of the citizens of Leningrad. The film is built around archive photographs and documentary material, with a commentary by Feodor Feodoric Shalyapin, the baritone's son, a former Hollywood actor, now in his sixties, who has returned to Leningrad. The camera lingers on his face in an almost provocatory way: he looks at us from the screen, while we can see the deep wrinkles, the signs of age, revealing that he is a man like many others, an actor nearing the end of his career.