Holynsky, Mykhailo

Holynsky, Mykhailo [Голинський, Михайло; Holyns'kyj, Myxajlo], b 2 January 1895 in Verbivtsi, Horodenka county, Galicia, d 1 December 1973 in Edmonton, Alberta. Operatic tenor. In 1920 he began to study voice in Lviv and continued in Milan. After his successful debut at the Lviv Opera Theater in 1925, he appeared in Poznań, Toruń, and Warsaw. Apart from a brief trip to Berlin in 1927, Holynsky spent 1926–30 as a tenor soloist in the USSR—in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Moscow, Leningrad, and Tbilisi. In the 1930s he sang in Lviv, Warsaw, and the larger cities of Galicia. During a tour of the United States of America and Canada, the Second World War broke out and he decided to settle in Canada. In subsequent years he gave numerous recitals and made several recordings (see Recorded music).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]