Ukrainian musician, conductor, bassoonist. A serviceman, participant of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Biography.
Kostiantyn Starovytskyi was born in Kherson in 1982. He studied at the Kherson Music College. He played the bassoon.
In 2011-2015, he studied at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine, specializing in opera and symphony conducting (master's degree), class of Professor Kozhukhar V.M. From 2015 to 2018, he continued his studies in the assistantship-training, class of Professor Kozhukhar Volodymyr Markovych.
Creative work.
As a conductor, Kostiantyn Starovytskyi collaborated with the most famous orchestras of the country.
At the opera studio of the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine, he conducted operas by G. Verdi "La Traviata", S. Rachmaninoff "Aleko", and S. Hulak-Artemovsky "Cossack Beyond the Danube".
He worked as a conductor at the State Academic Variety and Symphony Orchestra and the Kyiv Opera. As a conductor-director, he realized Donizetti's opera Rita (Kyiv Opera, 2016, directed by Lada Shylenko), which received four nominations at the Kyiv Pectoral Theater Award in 2017. Also as a conductor-director, he staged Don Pasquale (Opera Studio of the National Music Academy of Ukraine named after P. Tchaikovsky, Kyiv, Ukraine). Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine, 2019, directed by Oleksandra Sheveleva), Gianni Schicchi by G. Puccini (Opera Studio of the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine, 2019, directed by Oleksandra Siebert), The Taming of the Shrew (Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine), etc. In 2018, he was the chief conductor of the OPERA WEEKEND festival at the Mala Opera, where he conducted performances of G. C. Menotti's The Medium (directed by Oleksandr Spivakovsky), W. A. Mozart's Bastien and Bastienne (directed by Dmytro Todoriuk), and G. Donizetti's Rita (directed by Lada Shylenko).
He has participated in music festivals and competitions. In 2011, he won the first prize of the III All-Ukrainian Festival of Conducting Art "Musical Tavria" in Kherson.
He translated opera librettos into Ukrainian and was also a master of orchestration.
Military service and death
From the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion, Kostiantyn Starovytskyi began to defend the state. He served in the Chernihiv and Kharkiv regions. Later he was transferred to Donetsk region. He was killed on April 4, 2023, during a Russian shelling in the Kramatorsk sector.
Honoring his memory
"Such professionals have been studying for about 20 years, they are few and far between, and they are irreplaceable. He simply did not have time to realize many of his plans. We cannot implement his ideas in his place, because it is his vision and sense of music that are important here," musicologist Halyna Dub.
