Markovych, Opanas

Markovych, Opanas [Markovyč], b 8 February 1822 in Kulazhyntsi, Pyriatyn county, Poltava gubernia, d 1 September 1867 in Chernihiv. (Photo: Opanas Markovych.) Ethnographer, composer, and civic figure; husband of Marko Vovchok. After graduating from Kyiv University (1846) he was arrested for belonging to the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood and exiled to Orel. Apart from a brief stay in Saint Petersburg (1860–1), where he worked on the journal Osnova (Saint Petersburg), from 1851 he lived in Ukraine and collected folkloric and ethnographic materials. Many of them were published in collections edited by Amvrosii Metlynsky, Matvii Nomys, and Volodymyr Antonovych and Mykhailo Drahomanov or in journals and almanacs. He scored the music for Ivan Kotliarevsky's Natalka Poltavka (Natalka from Poltava, 1857) and K. Topolia's Chary (Charms, 1866) and staged these operettas in Chernihiv and Novhorod-Siverskyi. A collection of the materials gathered by Markovych and his wife, titled Fol’klorni zapysy Marka Vovchka ta Opanasa Markovycha (Folklore Notations of Marko Vovchok and Opanas Markovych), came out in 1983.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]