Stefanovych, Mykhailo

Stefanovych, Mykhailo [Стефанович, Михайло; Stefanovyč, Myxajlo], b 14 February 1898 in Kyiv, d 5 August 1970 in Kyiv. Opera singer (bass), artistic director, and musicologist. A graduate of Kyiv Conservatory (1922), he studied singing under Mykhailo Mykysha and E. Zbrueva. His operatic career began at the Kyiv Youth Opera Theater (1919), and from 1921 he was soloist of the Kyiv Theater of Opera and Ballet, Odesa Opera and Ballet Theater, Kharkiv Theater of Opera and Ballet, and opera theaters in Perm, Saratov, and Novosibirsk. His operatic roles included Taras Bulba, Ruslan, Boris Godunov, and Don Basilio in Giacomo Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia. From 1928 he was artistic director of opera theaters in Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk (see Dnipropetrovske Ukrainian Opera and Ballet Theater), Kharkiv, Lviv (see Lviv Theater of Opera and Ballet), and Kyiv (1947–54). He wrote biographies of the singers Mykhailo Donets, Dmytro Hnatiuk, Ivan Patorzhynsky, and Petro Bilynnyk.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]