Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Operatic baritone from Siberia who shot to fame after winning Cardiff Singer of the World in 1989
DMITRI HVOROSTOVSKY, who has died aged 55, was the silver-haired baritone from Siberia who caused a musical sensation when he swept to victory at the Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 1989; he went on to conquer the hearts of opera lovers the world over with his tall, muscular figure, smouldering looks and powerful, honey coloured voice.
His major triumphs came with outstanding and intensely dramatic accounts of Verdi, in operas such as La Traviata, Simon Boccanegra and Un Ballo in Maschera, though he was also utterly convincing in the title role of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.
“Dmitri Hvorostovsky ranks with the legends,” declared Rupert Christiansen in The Daily Telegraph of his appearance in Gounod’s Faust at the Royal Opera House in September 2011, adding that his performance as Valentin “was marked by impeccable technical control and a gripping death scene”.
Hvorostovsky burst on to the international stage just as the Soviet Union was crumbling, and soon became a symbol of a new, forwardlooking Russia. When President Putin faltered in his embrace of democracy in the 2010s, the singer deftly navigated the political divide, becoming neither a critic nor an apologist for Putin’s attacks on gay rights and other freedoms.
He nevertheless endeared himself to the Kremlin with large-scale patriotic concerts of Russian wartime songs, a duet with Anna Netrebko in Red Square and private appearances for oligarchs and their entourages.
In the 1990s Hvorostovsky had been seen in glossy magazines, as his record company cashed on his gorgeous looks and equally gorgeous voice. In 1991 People magazine named him one of “the world’s 50 most beautiful people”, while Elle called him the “Elvis of opera” and the Financial Times reported that he gave off a sexual heat that “burns up every female on stage”.
As for the music, Hvorostovsky only needed to open his mouth for a rich, perfectly articulated, stream of notes to pour forth as he displayed his peerless musicianship in roles such as Yeletsky in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades under Bernard Haitink at Covent Garden in May 2001. But right from the outset he had been, noted Opera News, “essentially a finished product: his glorious timbre, seamlessly stitched legato and astonishing breath control … are all in ample evidence”.
Dmitri Aleksandrovich Hvorostovsky – widely known as Dima – was an only child born on October 16 1962 in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. His father was a chemical engineer and his mother a gynaecologist, though he was largely brought up by his grandmother and grandfather, a violent alcoholic.
He came of age at a time when Moscow was placating many of its more distant outposts by pouring money into culture. “I have nothing to complain about,” he told The Daily Telegraph in 2002. “I didn’t need to leave [Krasnoyarsk] to continue my studies.” As a teenager he sang heavy metal numbers with a local rock band: “It was a way to become a local hero.”
He collected rare Verdi LPS from the West and studied locally with Yekaterina Yofel at the Krasnoyarsk School of Arts. There were several competition wins in his homeland, including the Glinka Competition in Moscow in 1987, as well as success in the Toulouse Singing Competition in 1988. However, it took Hvorostovsky’s victory in the West in 1989 to garner him a large following.
He had been encouraged to enter the Cardiff competition by Irina Arkhipova, his teacher in Moscow and one of the 20th century’s greatest Russian mezzos, and he turned up in the Welsh capital looking slightly dazed, with a pair of KGB “translators” in tow. His triumph in the final, with a dark and brooding account of Ombra
mai fu from Handel’s Serse, meant only a runner’s-up prize for Bryn Terfel, the local favourite.
The very day after his win he was signed up by the Philips record label; within weeks he had given a recital in London, and very soon he had been booked by the Royal Opera. Returning home to Siberia after his win, “they called the police to put up barriers to protect me,” he told the journalist Anna Picard in December 2014.
One commentator noted that it was as if the 27-year-old singer had been picked up by helicopter from base camp and dropped at the top of Everest. Yet, as the critic Alan Blyth wrote at the time: “If you look like Nureyev and sing like Lisitsian [a great Russian baritone], the opera world is open to you.”
It was a while before Hvorostovsky learnt the rigorous discipline that comes with being a top-flight artist, but eventually smoking would be replaced by gym workouts and even alcohol would fall by the wayside.
“I was a typical Russian who loved his vodka,” he once admitted with wry understatement (in 2008 he told The
New York Times that he had started drinking the spirit at age 14, was involved in gang fights and had his nose broken several times). He also began to ration both the number of his performances and the range of his repertoire.
His US debut, in 1993, was as Germont in La Traviata at Chicago Lyric Opera, and he was a major hit at the Met, starting with The Queen of Spades in 1995 and graduating to La Traviata, Don Carlo and Rigoletto (making a particular impression in the last of those in 2003 starring alongside Renée Fleming), as well as Russianlanguage staples such as Eugene Onegin and War and Peace.
He resisted calls to take part in more popular music, claiming that he would even turn down $1 million to sing with Madonna. At the turn of the 21st century he fell out with Philips, accusing them of trying to push him into “tacky” collaborations.
Yet he was not immune from modelling for Tom Ford, appearing in Ferrero Rocher advertisements or including lighter numbers in his recital programmes. When he sang at a more intimate venue such as the Wigmore Hall, the tickets were as rare as hens’ teeth, with queues for returns stretching down Wigmore Street.
Although Hvorostovsky retained his looks and voice, middle age was less kind: an expensive divorce at the turn of the century was bitterly reopened a decade later for a revised financial settlement; a vocal crisis in 2010 left him out of action for a time; and there was a loss of confidence.
“I literally had to have someone to push me on to the stage,” he recalled in 2014. Yet by the end of that year he was back in action as Riccardo in Un Ballo in Maschera at Covent Garden.
In June 2015, after some months of ill health, a brain tumour was diagnosed, causing Hvorostovsky to cancel his engagements. He sought treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.
In 1989, just before his Cardiff win, Dmitri Hvorostovsky married Svetlana, who gave up her career as a ballerina to move with him to England in 1994. They had twin sons and were divorced in 2001. His second marriage, in 2001, was to Florence Illi, a Swiss singer. They had a son and a daughter.
Dmitri Hvorostovsky, born October 16 1962, died November 22 2017