Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Silver-Maned Baritone From Siberia, Dies at 55
- 6 years ago
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Silver-Maned Baritone From Siberia, Dies at 55
An announcement said, “Although his voice and vocal condition are normal, his sense of balance has been severely affected.”
He canceled his summer appearances to undergo treatment in London, his main home since the 1990s, and it seemed doubtful
that he would be able to fulfill his commitment to the Met, which had scheduled him to sing six performances in October in a revival of its 2009 production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” with Mr. Hvorostovsky in the lead role of Count di Luna.
An only child, Mr. Hvorostovsky lived mostly with his maternal grandmother, whom he adored,
and his volatile step-grandfather, a broken-down war hero, whom Mr. Hvorostovsky described in 2003 in a profile in The New Yorker as “vain, arrogant and deeply alcoholic.”
He remained devoted to his father, an engineer, and his mother, a gynecologist.
There “have been many beautiful voices,’’ the soprano Renée Fleming said, “but in my opinion none more beautiful than Dmitri’s.”
Early on, Mr. Hvorostovsky (pronounced voh-roh-STOV-ski) excelled as Valentin in Gounod’s “Faust,” Belcore in Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore”
and the title role of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” which he played with captivating suavity.
Debuts followed in Nice, France; Amsterdam; Barcelona, Spain; Venice; and London, where he introduced to Europe roles
that would define his later career, including Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Yeletsky in “The Queen of Spades,” the role in which he made his Met debut in 1995.
He sang a program of Russian songs as well as some German ones by Richard Strauss, including several
that seemed to be parting messages to his devoted fans, like Tchaikovsky’s “The Nightingale,” with lyrics by Pushkin, which include these lines:
Dig me a grave In the broad open field At my head plant Flowers of scarlet.
An announcement said, “Although his voice and vocal condition are normal, his sense of balance has been severely affected.”
He canceled his summer appearances to undergo treatment in London, his main home since the 1990s, and it seemed doubtful
that he would be able to fulfill his commitment to the Met, which had scheduled him to sing six performances in October in a revival of its 2009 production of Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” with Mr. Hvorostovsky in the lead role of Count di Luna.
An only child, Mr. Hvorostovsky lived mostly with his maternal grandmother, whom he adored,
and his volatile step-grandfather, a broken-down war hero, whom Mr. Hvorostovsky described in 2003 in a profile in The New Yorker as “vain, arrogant and deeply alcoholic.”
He remained devoted to his father, an engineer, and his mother, a gynecologist.
There “have been many beautiful voices,’’ the soprano Renée Fleming said, “but in my opinion none more beautiful than Dmitri’s.”
Early on, Mr. Hvorostovsky (pronounced voh-roh-STOV-ski) excelled as Valentin in Gounod’s “Faust,” Belcore in Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore”
and the title role of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” which he played with captivating suavity.
Debuts followed in Nice, France; Amsterdam; Barcelona, Spain; Venice; and London, where he introduced to Europe roles
that would define his later career, including Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Yeletsky in “The Queen of Spades,” the role in which he made his Met debut in 1995.
He sang a program of Russian songs as well as some German ones by Richard Strauss, including several
that seemed to be parting messages to his devoted fans, like Tchaikovsky’s “The Nightingale,” with lyrics by Pushkin, which include these lines:
Dig me a grave In the broad open field At my head plant Flowers of scarlet.