German Wagnerian opera singer (bass-baritone) of Ukrainian descent; sang the arias of Alberich (The Gold of the Rhine, Siegfried, The Death of the Gods), Klingzor (Parsifal), The Dutchman (The Flying Dutchman) and Hans Sachs (The Meistersingers of Nuremberg) on the leading stages of Germany, Austria, the USA, etc. Protodeacon of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Krefeld near Dusseldorf.
Biography.
At the age of 15, during the German-Soviet war of 1941-1945, Oleh's father was taken from occupied Ukraine to Germany for forced labor:
He survived only to be labeled an "enemy of the people" and a "traitor" after the Red Army liberated him and spent 25 years in the Kazakh Gulag. I was born in this camp, in a settlement.
- Oleh Bryzhak, interview with Deutsche Welle, August 2014.
In 1979, he graduated from the Karaganda Music School with a degree in accordion. While studying at the school, he worked in the student choir to earn money. It was there that his voice was first noticed. But it was only Oleh's father who finally persuaded him to try singing. After graduating from the Alma-Ata Conservatory in 1984 with a degree in vocal performance, he worked as a teacher at the Dzhezkazgan and Temirtau music schools.
In 1986 - 1989 he was a soloist at the Chelyabinsk and Lviv Opera Theaters.
In 1989-1991, he was a soloist at the Glinka Chapel in Leningrad. In 1990, he won the 2nd Prize at the Internationalen Koloratur-Gesangswettbewerbs-Sylvia Geszty (Internationalen Koloratur-Gesangswettbewerbs-Sylvia Geszty) in Stuttgart.
After emigrating from the Soviet Union to Germany in 1991-1996, he was a soloist at the Baden State Theater in Karlsruhe. Since 1996, he has been a soloist at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf.
Repeatedly, during Wolfgang Wagner's lifetime, he took part in the annual Wagner Bayreuth Festival; the last time was in June 2014, when he was unexpectedly invited to replace soloist Martin Winkler in the role of Alberich a week before the performance of The Ring of Nibelung.
Oleh Bryzhak expressed his attitude to the events in Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and Russian military aggression as follows:
"It is very painful for me to watch the events in Ukraine. My father was a Ukrainian.
...I grew up among the children of other former prisoners, with Russians and Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Georgians, Latvians and Kazakhs. It was such an international environment. For me, ethnic hatred is something incomprehensible.
But the most terrible thing for me, and I'm not speaking as an opera singer, but as a protodeacon, is that people are dying in this conflict. Every day, every hour. Children are dying. No political goal can justify this.
- Oleh Bryzhak, interview with Deutsche Welle, August 2014.
A service in the church
In the late 1980s, I was ordained a deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church.
In Germany, Father Oleh devoted much of his free time to serving in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Krefeld, where he was ordained as a protodeacon. The service was conducted in two languages - Ukrainian and German:
"Orthodox Christians of all nationalities come to our church: Russians, Ukrainians, Ethiopians, Serbs, and Orthodox Germans.
The Gospel is read in two languages. As for the exclamations and litanies, I can't tell who is more numerous today. I am happy that I can serve...
- Oleh Bryzhak, interview with Deutsche Welle, August 2014.
Tragic death
Died at about 11 o'clock on March 24, 2015 in the crash of the Airbus A320-211 of the low-cost airline Germanwings in the municipality of Pra Haut-Bléon in the Alpes-de-Hautes-Provence department in the south of France. On this plane, Oleh Bryzhak and his colleague, opera singer Maria Radner, were returning home from Barcelona after performances of Richard Wagner's opera Siegfried at the Grand Opera House Liceu.
