Vladimir Ognovienko

Vladimir Ognovenko is a well-established character bass singer, particularly in Russian operas. He has had a long career in both leading and secondary bass roles. He graduated from the Ural Conservatory and began working his way up through the Russian opera hierarchy in 1970, where he was a member of the Krasnoyarsk Opera Theater and the Sverdlovsk Opera House between 1970 and 1980. He joined the Maly Theater in Leningrad in 1984 and in 1989 gained a spot on the soloist roster of the Kirov Opera in the Mariinsky Theater. Since the end of the Soviet Union and its restrictions on artists' travel, Ognovenko has sung in important international opera houses. He debuted in the United States in San Francisco in 1991 in Prokofiev's War and Peace, doubling the roles of Old Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky and Matveyev. He was invited back to the same house in 1992 to sing Varlaam in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov and both Ruslan and Farlaf in its production of Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila. Others of his roles included the title part of Boris Godunov, Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust, Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Galitsky in Borodin's Prince Igor, the General in Prokofiev's The Gambler, King Philip II in Verdi's Don Carlos, and Prince Gremin in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin. He is particularly active in the list of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera, with Ivan the Terrible (in The Maid of Pskov), Viking Guest and Duda (Sadko), and Burunday (Invisible City of Kitezh) in his repertory. He debuted at the Chicago Lyric Opera as Boris, and at the Metropolitan Opera in Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. He has recorded the roles of Prince Igor, Varlaam, the Viking Guest, and the Inquisitor in Prokofiev's Fiery Angel. He received the high honor of being proclaimed a People's Artist of Merit by the Soviet Russian Federated Republic.