Orest Rusnak (*24 July 1894, Dubivtsi - †23 January 1960) was an opera tenor singer. He was the brother of Denys Rusnak.
Biography.
He was born on 24 July 1894 in the village of Dubivtsi, Bukovyna. 1919 - 1923 - studying at the Prague Conservatory in the class of E. Fuchs. During his student years, O. Rusnák occasionally sang at the Bratislava Opera and gave concerts in other cities of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Later he studied in Milan. Since 1924 he has been a soloist at opera houses in Königsberg, Chemnitz, Graz, and for several years in Munich (under the pseudonym Gerlach); he toured Berlin, Leipzig, Vienna, and Ukraine (at the Kharkiv Opera House, 1928); he gave concerts in a number of cities in the Ukrainian SSR and Western Ukraine. For example, on 13 and 14 July 1930, he performed at the Taras Shevchenko Theatre in Dnipro, according to a local newspaper announcement, as a "German opera singer", performing excerpts from operas and romances.
Repertoire
Main roles: Cavaradossi and Rudolfo (Tosca and La bohème by G. Puccini), Arnold (William Tell by G.-A. Rossini), Manrico (Il trovatore by G. Verdi), Lionel (Marta by F. Fletov), etc. Rusnak is an outstanding performer of songs by Mykola Lysenko and other Ukrainian composers.
(See I. Novosivsky's monograph "Orest Rusnak - the Life of an Opera Singer". New York 1971).
