“Vassily Savenko was born near Odessa, Ukraine. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Alexei Bolshakov, and later with Mikhail Kiselev. He won both the Mussorgsky and Lysenko Competitions and has sung principal roles for major opera houses in his native Ukraine and in Russia, including the Bolshoy Opera, Moscow, and the Kirov Opera, St Petersburg, where he sang Iago (Otello) under Valery Gergiev.
Intheearly1990sVassilySavenkomovedtoBritainwhere his debut at London’s Wigmore Hall in 1994 launched the showcase vocal series ‘Russian Images’, followed by ‘Rachmaninoff and Medtner’, ‘Russian Horizons’, and ‘Pushkin in Music’. UK festival appearances have included the Cheltenham International Music, Hereford Autumn, Three Choirs, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Oxford Lieder. Elsewhere: the International Kiev Music Fest, Moscow International Autumn Festival, and the Second International Medtner Festival with Tchaikovsky gold medallist Boris Berezovsky. In July 2008 he performed at the prestigious international festival Three Centuries of the Classical Romance in St Petersburg. His recital programmes, on the concert platform and on CD, reflect his eclectic tastes and have included romances by Arensky, Taneyev, Medtner, Lyatoshinsky, Glière, Mosolov, Denisov, Sviridov, Khrennikov, and Levitin, as well as works from the standard repertoire. His collaboration with Boris Berezovsky has focused on the wonderful songs of Nikolai Medtner: they have given recitals in the UK, Belgium, at the International Medtner Festival in Russia, and in Japan.
Vassily Savenko made his UK operatic debut to great acclaim in a Rachmaninoff double-bill, interpreting the dual roles of The Baron in The Miserly Knight and Lanciotto Malatesta in Francesca da Rimini. In recent years he has performed with the conductors Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, Alexander Lazarev, Alexander Annisimov, Nikolai Alexeev, Alberto Hold-Garrido, and David Lloyd-Jones in principal roles for Welsh National Opera, Opera Holland Park, Grange Park Opera, Opera Ireland, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos Lisbon, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, and Staatstheater Klagenfurt in Austria, and concert performances with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Chelsea Opera, and the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra.”
