Luka Semenovych Konopa (1896, Zhernyky village, Tomaszów Poviat, Lublin Voivodeship, Kholm region - 29 June 1941, Ternopil) was a Ukrainian conductor, violinist, educational and cultural figure of the Zborivshchyna, and a participant in the liberation struggle.
He received his musical education in Kholm and Lviv.
He was a chorunzhy of the troops of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi (1918) and Symon Petliura (1918-1919). Later he was a lieutenant, a centurion of the UPR Army[1]. Member of the Ukrainian Radical Party.
In 1932-1939, he worked as a secretary of the county branch of the Prosvita Society in Zboriv. He travelled to the villages of the county on various assignments to local Prosvita reading rooms, provided practical assistance in organising choirs, trained conductors, attended rehearsals, delivered music literature, scores for church choirs, and music for amateur performances. He led the men's and mixed choirs and the brass band in Zboriv, which took part in concerts dedicated to Taras Shevchenko and Ivan Franko.
In 1939, he was thrown into the Polish prison of Bereza Kartuzka.
Arrested by the NKVD on 7 November 1940 in Zboriv, later transferred to the Ternopil NKVD prison (now the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). He was shot by the NKVD together with 700 other prisoners in June 1941.
The date of his death was 29 June 1941.
He was rehabilitated in 1952 for lack of corpus delicti. The probable place of burial is a mass grave of NKVD victims at the old Mykulynetske cemetery in Ternopil. Until 1996, his fate was unknown.
Choral activity
The repertoire of the choir led by Luka Konopa included the following works: Dmytro Kotko's "The Dug Grave", Petro Nishchynskyi's "The Grey Cuckoo Cawed", Sydor Vorobkevych's "My Thoughts", Yaroslav Yaroslavenko's "Water Flows from Under the Sycamore Tree" and "The Enlightenment Anthem", Frank Yaroslavenko's "Oh, What's in the Smoke Field", and Yosyp Kyshakevych's "When You Were Dying", "Our Glorious Ukraine" by Borys Kudryk, "The Dnipro River Roars and Groans" by Mykola Lysenko, "Oh, the Dawn Rises, It Stands Over Pochayiv" and arrangements of folk songs by Mykola Leontovych, "A Rifleman Went to War" and "Eagles Flew Out" by Mykhailo Haivoronsky, and others.
The choir has performed at the annual December Enlightenment celebrations, concerts of the Ridna Shkola, at evenings in memory of Taras Shevchenko, Lesya Ukrainka, Markian Shashkevych, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Battle of Zboriv, at song festivals, and at sports shows.
The Zboriv choir, including the Luka Konopa Orchestra, has participated in visiting concerts and festivals in Zolochiv, Pomoriany, Zaliztsi, Rozgadov, Velyka Plavucha, and surrounding villages. In addition to Zboriv, Luka Konopa led choirs in the villages of Vovchkivtsi, Mshanets, Prysivtsi, Pohribtsi, Kabarivtsi, Velyka Plavucha[4]. Sometimes he united those choirs (3-4) at concerts to perform hymns, oratorios, cantatas (at the anniversary celebrations in Zboriv: 50th anniversary of the "Native School" (1931). On 23 July 1933, as a member of the Jubilee Committee, he took an active part in the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Prosvita in Zboriv, led the orchestra and choir, the 100th anniversary of Rusalka Dnistrova (1937), and others.
Having trained choirs in some villages, Luka Konopa passed them on to young conductors, often trained by him. He helped the amateur music group in Zboriv, headed by Kornelia Kulyk, the wife of the dean, and staged Natalka Poltavka and The Black Sea Fleet by Mykola Lysenko and Kateryna by Yosyp Kyshakevych.
