Alexei Ryabov (Alexei Ryabov) |

Alexey Ryabov

Ryabov is a Soviet composer, one of the oldest authors of the Soviet operetta.

Alexey Panteleimonovich Ryabov was born on March 5 (17), 1899 in Kharkov. He received his musical education at the Kharkov Conservatory, where he studied violin and composition at the same time. After graduating from the conservatory in 1918, he taught violin, worked as an accompanist of a symphony orchestra in Kharkov and other cities. In his early years he created the Violin Concerto (1919), a number of chamber-instrumental and vocal compositions.

The year 1923 turned out to be a turning point in Ryabov’s creative life: he wrote the operetta Colombina, which premiered in Rostov-on-Don. Since then, the composer has firmly linked his work with the operetta. In 1929, in Kharkov, instead of the Russian operetta troupe that had existed for many years, the first operetta theater in the Ukrainian language was formed. The repertoire of the theater, along with Western operettas, included Ukrainian musical comedies. For many years, Ryabov was its conductor, and in 1941 he became the chief conductor of the Kyiv Theater of Musical Comedy, where he worked until the end of his days.

Ryabov’s creative heritage includes more than twenty operettas and musical comedies. Among them are “Sorochinsky Fair” (1936) and “May Night” (1937) based on the plots of Gogol’s stories from the book “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”. His operetta based on the libretto by L. Yukhvid “Wedding in Malinovka” became widely known in Ukraine (B. Aleksandrov’s operetta on the same subject was widely spread outside the republic). Not endowed with a bright composer’s individuality, A.P. Ryabov possessed undeniable professionalism, he knew the laws of the genre well. His operettas were staged throughout the Soviet Union.

“Sorochinsky Fair” was included in the repertoire of many Soviet theaters. In 1975 it was staged in the GDR (Berlin, Metropol Theatre).

L. Mikheeva, A. Orelovich