ABOUT ME

Hello everybody! My name is Daria; I live in Vienna (and now also in Graz, 2025), Austria since the early 1990s.

I wrote this website during my times as a philosophy and Slavic studies student at the University of Vienna, and I’ve been interested in Queen and Freddie Mercury since 2001/2002.

My story

I was born in Ukraine, which was then a part of the USSR. My father was a teenager in the 70s, and it seemed that the interest for the Western world among the Soviet youth started to increase; but as (rock) music from the West was prohibited until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 – except for some ultra famous bands and/or musicians like The Beatles who were extra pressed on a Soviet label, often on blue flexi discs, and a little bit later Boney M. and ABBA – there was circulating an illegal market with a selection of Queen, Yes, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd & Co. tapes (! – not even LPs). My father regularly listened at his friend’s home to the music from the above-mentioned artists; his band even played “Love Of My Life” at their school concerts.

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, everything had changed; as life was getting harder, we settled down in Austria in late 1993.

You may ask now how I got introduced to Queen… that was indeed very exciting… My father bought the “A Night At The Opera” album just when it was released on CD in winter/spring 1994; when I heard it for the first time, I thought it was opera, because it said ‘opera’ on the cover (I was a little child then). I was so amused by the funny pieces, especially “Seaside Rendezvous”, “Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon” and “Good Company”, and I immediately liked “Love Of My Life”. When I heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” for the first time, I really had a strange feeling, especially when my father told me then that the man who wrote this song sadly died in 1991. Although I could not understand English then, I turned really sad as ‘the man’ started to sing ‘Mama…’.

My parents and I often listened to this album, but as school and life was getting complicated with time, I soon forgot it and rediscovered it just some time after I turned into a teenager, in 2001/2002. My interest for Queen and especially for Freddie Mercury started at this point.

I tried to learn something about the people behind this music – but doing this, I discovered a lot of controversial information about Freddie Mercury; I learned that there were and still are many rumours about him and so I began to scrutinize the information I received.

But even if there are still things to be discovered, I am sure that in the end Freddie Mercury was an outstanding artist - who lived a tragic life.

Something about me…

Some of my interests are:

  • Philosophy
  • Classic literature / reading
  • Christianity and Jesus Christ
  • Music and singing/composing
  • Doing sports
  • Research
  • Art
  • Languages and foreign cultures

Links & Channels

Queen Tribute YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/mercuriesque (some Queen tribute videos I made at school)
Music YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/dariarock1 (my own music)
Personal Blog: www.gloriajoan.com (texts in German, English, and Ukrainian 😊)