23 November. On the eve of an early morning in London, one of the most famous singers of the world - Dmitry Hvorostovsky. He was considered a "national treasure" not only of Russia, but of the world.
He was greeted with a stormy ovation on the great opera stages: Covent Garden, the Metropolitan Opera, the Berlin Staatsoper, La Scala, the Vienna Opera, the Mariinsky Theater, Chicago, Paris, Salzburg. But in the last year of his life, the singer increasingly had to cancel his performances. In December of last year, he was unable to enter the Bolshoi Theater when he was to sing Rodrigo's part in Don Carlos. This year he was forced to cancel the performance at the Vienna Opera. The whole operatic world knew that Dmitri Hvorostovsky was seriously ill - he had a brain tumor.
The whole world was waiting for a miracle. It seemed that fortune should not turn away from such a great man to whom fate had given all the attributes of earthly success - male charisma, boundless talent, philosophical mentality and a voice that conquered all and always - and when he was just starting his singing career in his native Krasnoyarsk in a rock band, and when in the 80s he sang on the stage of the Krasnoyarsk Opera and Ballet Theater, and when Irina Arkhipova, admired by his talent, presented him the first prize at the All-Union Contest by the vocalist. M.I. Glinka. Two years later Dmitry won a triumphant victory at the International Young Singers' Competition in Wales Cardiff.
He was considered the standard performer of George Sviridov's music. It was for Hvorostovsky Sviridov wrote a musical poem "Petersburg". The world premiere of the Sviridov cycle Dmitry Hvorostovsky sang in London's Wigmore Hall. But it so happened that all the great theaters of the world fought for contracts with the great singer, and Dmitry was not called to Moscow. Here he came himself: he performed in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, sang songs of the war years, performed in Red Square, and once, surprising everyone, appeared in the role of a pop singer - with the songs of Igor Krutoy. And only 2 years ago, Moscow heard Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the operatic role: director Dmitry Bertman realized the dream of the already afflicted Khvorostovsky, putting Anton Rubinstein at the philharmonic scene of the Tchaikovsky Hall of the Demon.
After that, the exhausting, hard struggle with cancer, long courses of treatment at the London oncology center "Royal Marsden", the cancellation of speeches, contracts, the last of which - "Simon Boccanegra" in the Vienna Opera, began. The concert of Khvorostovsky was canceled in the Great Hall of the Conservatory on September 26. The disease killed the singer, but he fought it until the last.
