Tarkhov was born on March 30th, 1890 in Penza into a railway engineer family.
In 1908, after graduating from the Penza secondary school, Tarkhov entered the juridical department of Moscow University.
Since his youth, he was fascinated by singing (especially by dramatic tenors);
therefore he studied in parallel singing at the Moscow conservatory with V. M. Zarudnoj.
During the fourth year, after making a final decision in favor of opera, he left the university.
Dmitrij Tarkhov made his debut in
Saratov in 1918. He sang in different Moscow theaters (Narodnyj Dom, Svobodnaja Opera, Stanislavskij Nemirovich-Danchenko)
and other cities like Perm, Sverdlovsk (1928/29), Astrakhan, Saratov and Baku during the next
20 or 30 years.
Since 1936/37, Tarkhov
sang mainly in Moscow. Tarkhov participated in operatic performances
on the Moscow All-Union Radio. Earlier weekly USSR radio performances
had acquainted the listeners with opera.
Operatic performances were either transmitted from the Bolshoj, or were especially recorded for the radio.
Therefore the radio had its own opera
troupe, made of first-class singers, among whom were
N. Rozhdestvenskaja, G. Sakharova, V. Zakharov. Among the tenors were Tarkhov, Vinogradov,
and later Lisovskij.
Rarely performed operas were put on by the radio. Tarkhov sang in Oresteja by Taneev, Manon Lescaut,
Skazanie o nevidimom grade Kitezhe i deve Fevronii/The legend of the invisible city of Kitezh and the maiden Fevronia, Askoldova
mogila by Verstovskij, Oprichnik, Kamennnyj gost/The stone guest,
Noch pered Rozhdestvom/The night before Christmas, Tosca, Majskaja noch, Francesca da Rimini, Fidelio, La Gioconda, Un ballo
in maschera, Kupets Kalashnikov/The merchant Kalashnikov by Rubinstein, ....
His repertory included: Lenskij, Sinodal, Grigorij, Golitsyn, Radames, José, Alfredo, Duca, Canio,
Berendej, Prince, Vladimir Igorevich, ...
Tarkhov translated libretti of several operas into Russian, such as Un ballo in maschera, Fra Diavolo, La Gioconda, and Robert le
diable.
From 1948 on, he taught singing at Gnesin, until 1966.
Tarkhov also wrote poetry and composed romances that were published only after his death.
Tarkhov died on October 5th, 1966 in Moscow. He is burried at the Novodevichye cemetery.
Tarkhov did not make standard records. From 1948 to 1952, Tarkhov
recorded operatic excerpts and romances on the radio.
In 1990, Melodiya issued a single LP of him singing romances by Glinka, Dargomyzhskij, Schumann, Chajkovskij,
Arenskij, Cui, Shaporin, Aleksandrov, and by himself.
Reference 1
Reference 2