Lydia Lipkowska was born to the family of a rural teacher, in Babyn,[1] Khotinsky Uyezd of the Bessarabia Governorate, Russian Empire (now in the Dnistrovskyi Raion of the Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine).

Together with other students, she sang in the church choir, she had her own solo parties, drawing attention with a magic voice that ran under the dome of the cathedral.

[1] Her repertoire at that opera house included Gilda in Rigoletto, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, Marfa in The Tsar's Bride, Micaëla in Carmen, Olga in Ivan IV, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, and the title roles in Iolanta, Lakmé, Lucia di Lammermoor, and The Snow Maiden.

[2] She later returned to the Royal Opera House as Violetta, Gilda, and in the title role of Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's Il segreto di Susanna for the United Kingdom premiere of that work in July 1911.

[1][2] In 1912, Lipkowska charged New York gangster Sam Schepps with usury over his refusal to return two diamonds worth $80,000 that she had pawned to him.

[10] Lipowska married Russian baritone Georges Baklanoff a few years prior to the outbreak of World War I; but the marriage ended in divorce.

[2] The couple appeared in numerous operas together in the years leading up to that war at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo; also collaborating frequently with tenor Giovanni Martinelli.

[12] Lipkowska fled the capital with her daughter, Aidenna, when the Bolsheviks seized power during the October Revolution of that year.

[12] The family lived in a remote area of the Caucasus region of Southern Russia, until once again fleeing the Bolshevik armies for the city of Odesa.

[12] There she befriended a French military officer, Pierre Bodin, who helped Lipkowska and her daughter to once again escape the invading Bolshevik armies in April 1919, by securing the family passage on a ship to Constantinople.