Farewell to St. Petersburg Russian: Прощание с Петербургом, romanized: Proshchaniye s Peterburgom is a 1972 Soviet biopic film directed by Yan Frid. The film is about the Austrian composer Johann Strauss's stay in Russia, his concerts in Pavlovsk in the summer of 1857, and his love towards the Russian aristocrat Olga Smirnitskiy, to whom he dedicated several works.