Vladislav Ivanovich Pyavko was born on February 4th, 1941, son of a Soviet military
officer, in Krasnojarsk. Nina Kirillovna, his mother, was from a Kerzhak family (a Siberian group of Old Believers). His father
died before his birth.
In 1946, Pyavko started school in the village of Tajozhnyj in the Kansk region of the
larger province of Krasnojarsk, where he already started to learn to play the accordion
from a teacher called Matysik. After this time he moved with his mother to the closed city of
Norilsk, above the arctic circle, where he attended middle school and completed
technical school. He then worked as a driver for a state-owned conglomerate, but also
as a freelance journalist for the local newspaper Zapoljarnaja Pravda, plus he supervised the
local amateur theatre group organized by the miners of Norilsk, and served as an extra in the city's drama theatre
Majakovskij.
Attempts to get accepted at trainings for acting or film directing, respectively, failed, and so Pyavko attended military college,
where his voice was detected; finally, he could enroll
into the GITIS State Institute of Theater and Art (class of
S. Rebrikov), receiving degrees in both singing
and stage direction with distinction in 1965. The same year, Vladislav Pyavko participated in a vocal
competition for trainees at the Bolshoj, and was accepted.
From 1967 to 1969,
he studied at La Scala. In 1969, Vladislav Pyavko won
a gold medal at a vocal competition in Belgium, and
in 1970 a silver medal and second prize at the International Chajkovskij
competition in Moscow. From that time, Vladislav Pyavko was a regular member of the Bolshoj.
He went on tour throughout the USSR and abroad:
Greece, England, Spain, Finland, USA, Korea, France, Italy, Belgium,
Netherlands, Poland, Georgia, Hungary, Romania, Ireland. His concert repertoire
included more than 500 vocal works as well as vocal symphonic works.
In 1989, Pyavko sang at the Staatsoper in Berlin.
During the 1980s, Pyavko started teaching singing at GITIS.
His repertory included: German, Vodemon, Prince, Manrico, Cavaradossi,
Andrej Khovanskij, Grigorij, Tucha, Pinkerton, Radames, Aleksej (Optimisticheskaja tragedija), Nozdrev (Mjortvye dushi/Dead souls by
Shchedring), Kuterma,
Guglielmo Ratcliff, Otello, José Sergej (Katerina Izmajlova)....
Pyavko had a powerful voice with good top notes, but not a beautiful timbre (and that's
putting it mildly).
He gave the occasional concert until 2016. He died on October 6th, 2020 in Moscow.
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