Evgenii Nesterenko

Born Jan. 8, 1938, in Moscow. Soviet Russian bass. People’s Artist of the USSR (1976). Member of the CPSU since 1974.

Nesterenko graduated from the Leningrad Construction Engineering Institute in 1961 and from the Leningrad Conservatory, where he had studied voice under V. M. Lukanin, in 1965. He became a soloist at the Leningrad Malyi Theater of Opera and Ballet in 1963, the S. M. Kirov Leningrad Theater of Opera and Ballet in 1967, and the Bolshoi Theater in 1971. Nesterenko has sung the role of Boris in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Igor in Borodin’s Prince Igor, Rustan in Glinka’s Rustan and Liudmila, the Miller in Dargomyzhskii’s The Mermaid, and Salieri in Rim-sky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri. Other roles include Philip II in Verdi’s Don Carlo, Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust, Kutu-zov in Prokofiev’s War and Peace, Grigorii in Dzerzhinskii’s The Quiet Don, and Andrei in Muradeli’s October. Nesterenko also concertizes.

From 1967 to 1971, Nesterenko taught at the Leningrad Conservatory. He taught at Gnesin’s Music Pedagogic Institute from 1972 to 1975, when he was made head of the subdepartment of solo singing at the Moscow Conservatory.

Nesterenko was awarded second prize at the International Competition of Young Opera Singers in Sofia in 1967 and first prize at the P. I. Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1970.