Soviet Ukrainian conductor and teacher. People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1957).
Biography.
Born in Kharkiv in the family of an opera house trumpeter. In his youth, he studied violin and made his debut as a violinist in the Kharkiv Symphony Orchestra. In 1926-1928, he studied in Leningrad at the newly opened music college.
In 1928, he returned to Kharkiv, where he worked in a symphony orchestra of mobile opera and entered the Kharkiv Music and Theater Institute.
In 1932, he graduated from the Kharkiv Music and Theater Institute, where he studied in the class of S. Bohatyrev (composition) and in the class of Y. Rosenstein (conducting). In parallel with his studies, he worked as a violinist in the Kharkiv Opera Orchestra, and since 1931, after his successful debut in the opera The Marriage of Figaro, he has been conducting. At the same time, after graduating from the institute, he remained there to teach orchestration, score reading and conducting, and from 1940 he was the head of the conducting department.
During the Second World War, he was evacuated to Irkutsk with the theater staff. There, in 1943, he prepared a production of M. Verikivsky's opera The Hireling, which opened the first postwar season in Kyiv.
From 1944, he worked in Kyiv at the Opera House and at the Conservatory, where an opera studio was opened under the direction of V. Tolba.
In 1949, he won the Stalin Prize for a successful production of Glinka's Ivan Susanin, after which he was invited to the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow.
In 1953, he returned to the Kyiv Opera, where he worked as a conductor until 1959. During his tenure at the Kyiv Opera, he staged 23 operas, including The Hireling by Ukrainian composers of his time by M. Verikivsky, Rostyslava and Honor by H. Zhukovsky, The Young Guard and Dawn Over the Dvina by Y. Maitus, Milan and Arsenal by H. Maiboroda. According to I. Hamkal's recollections, V. Tolba left the theater in a situation where the conductor had to give in to his demands, to compromise too much, in his opinion, despite the fact that he had unquestioned authority in the team, and was enjoyed by everyone.
At the same time, he continued to teach at the Kyiv Conservatory as an associate professor (since 1946) and professor (in 1962-1973).
As a conductor, he recorded music for 50 Ukrainian feature films, as well as for the film adaptation of the opera Zaporozhets Beyond the Danube. He is the author of a symphony on themes from the opera "Zaporozhets Beyond the Danube" (1983). Author of a number of articles.
A memorial plaque is installed on the house at 21 Yevhen Chykalenko Street in Kyiv, where Veniamin Tolba lived from 1944.
