The Mariinsky Theatre is saddened to announce that on 16 October bass Nikolai Petrovich Okhotnikov, an outstanding opera singer, soloist of the Kirov (Mariinsky) Theatre and People's Artist of the USSR, has died at the age of eighty-one.
For more than three decades Nikolai Okhotnikov dedicated his life to the Kirov Theatre, which he joined in 1971. Here he won acclaim and love from audiences, performing his greatest roles – Kutuzov in War and Peace, Heinrich der Vogler in Lohengrin, Filippo II in Don Carlo and Gremin in Eugene Onegin (for that role, like his partners in the production, Okhotnikov was awarded the State Prize). The singer's particularly vivid artistic and vocal skills were showcased in his Russian repertoire – as Susanin, Dosifei, Pimen and Boris Godunov, Konchak, Tokmakov, Kochubei, Yuri Vsevolodovich and Svetozar.
Nikolai Okhotnikov's versatile, nuance-rich and songful bass may be heard in recordings of Russian operas produced in the 1990s with Valery Gergiev, among them Khovanshchina, The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia and War and Peace. A superb performer of chamber music, he featured in a recording of an anthology of Russian romances, for which he sang all of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's romances for low-range voice.
As a professor at the St Petersburg Conservatoire, Nikolai Okhotnikov passed on his skills to the next generation of vocalists – at the Mariinsky Theatre his pupils still continue to perform, among them Alexander Morozov, Vladimir Feliauer, Yuri Vlasov and Vitaly Yankovsky.
The Mariinsky Theatre sends its sincere condolences to Nikolai Okhotnikov's friends and relatives. We mourn his loss with you.
The singer's farewell will take place on 20 October.
The civil funeral will commence at 10.00 in the Dress Circle Foyer of the Mariinsky Theatre (historic stage).
The funeral service will take place at 12.30 at the St Nicholas Naval Cathedral (1/3 Nikolskaya Sq).
The burial service will take place after the funeral service at the Volkov Cemetery at the "Literary Bridges" (30 Rasstannaya St).
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