Boris Shtokolov

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Boris Shtokolov (Russian: Борис Тимофеевич Штоколов) (March 19, 1930 - January 6, 2005) was a famous Soviet and Russian singer, one of the greatest basses of the 20th century.

Boris Shtokolov was born in the city of Kuznetsk, Kemerovo Oblast (USSR). In 1949 he entered the Ural State Conservatory in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) but wanted to became a military pilot. Georgy Zhukov having heard his singing said: There are many guys like you in the aviation, but in opera singing you are unique. In 1950-1951 he was singing at the Sverdlovsk Philarmonic Society before he became a soloist at the Sverdlovsk Opera and Ballet Theater. In 1959 he was invited to the Mariinsky Theatre in Leningrad where he gained a world fame being a leading solois of this theater from 1959 to 1989. At the Mariinsky Theater he created a great number of characters, such as Ruslan, Bazilio, Boris Godunov, Susanin, Demon, Gremin and Mephistophel and many others.

Boris Shtokolov also was a prominent theorist of opera singing and respiration techniques. In 1995 he published a book Burn, burn, my star having a subtitle How to sing.