Sergej Tolstov

Prague State Opera guest artist

Sergey Tolstov, a native of Novokuznetsk, Siberia, studied opera singing at the conservatory in Saratov, and at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg. His career as a soloist started at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg (1990 – 1993), where he debuted as Valentin in Gounod’s Faust. From 1994 – 1995 he was engaged by the State Opera in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, and since 1995 he has been soloist of the Slovak National Theatre opera company in Bratislava. He is the laureate of several international voice contests (Karlovy Vary 1989, Marseille 1993, finalist of the Luciano Pavarotti International Competition in Philadelphia).

Sergey Tolstov’s repertoire is centered around operas of Russian, Italian and French composers, including Tchaikovsky (Eugene Onegin; Yeletsky and Tomsky in The Queen of Spades; Lyonel in The Maid of Orleans), Verdi (Germont in La traviata; Miller in Luisa Miller; Ford in Falstaff; Rodrigo in Don Carlos), Gérard in Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, or Prokofiev (Prince Bolkonsky in War and Peace). Over the last few years, he has achieved remarkable success in such more expressly dramatic baritone parts as Nabucco, Renato in Un ballo in maschera, Amonasro in Aida, Macbeth, Alfio in Cavalleria rusticana, Michele in Il tabarro, Marcello in La bohème, or Scarpia in Tosca. He has guest appeared at numerous opera and concert venues in Russia, USA, France, Germany, Romania, Macedonia and Spain. He has worked regularly with the Slovak Philharmonic. With the Slovak National Theatre opera, Sergey Tolstov has toured in Switzerland, Hungary, Germany and Japan. In May and June 2010, he made a successful debut at the Zurich Opernhaus, as Rangoni in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, under the baton of Vladimir Fedoseyev.