He was an army officer until 1897, then he studied voice in St. Petersburg. He made his debut in Tbilisi in 1900, and was immediately
hired by the Mariinskij Theater. From 1904 to 1906, he sang in Warsaw – two years only (he briefly returned in 1911), but they
made him so popular in Poland that up to this day, he is regularly considered to have been Polish. (He called himself Teodor
Orzeszkiewicz in Poland, and also made records under that name, and in Polish.)
From 1906 to 1913, he was a member of the Kyiv opera theater, then he joined the Bolshoj in Moscow. In 1915, he was back to Kyiv,
where he stayed until retiring in 1925; the last five years, he was also that theater's director. Already since 1917, he taught voice
at the Kyiv conservatory.
His repertory included Alfredo, Duca, Hoffmann, Lenskij, Lykov, Berendej, Gvidon, Golitsyn, Werther, Jontek, Kazimierz (Hrabina),
Sadko, Radames, German, Dubrovskij, Simpleton, Shujskij, Grigorij, Massenet's des Grieux, Don José, Vladimir Igorevich, Andrej
(Mazepa), Dargomyzhskij's Prince, Mozart (Mozart i Salieri), Almaviva, Araquil (La Navarraise by Massenet), and above all: Lohengrin,
Siegmund, and Mime in Siegfried.
Other than in opera, he was also very active and successful as a lied interpreter.
Reference 1: Arkadij Pruzhanskij, Otechestvennye pevtsy 1750–1917, vol. 1, Moscow 1991; reference 2;
reference 3; reference 4