A conductor for one of Ukraine’s premier opera houses was killed on the front lines while defending his nation from the Russian invasion, and he has since been acclaimed as a hero.
According to the Ukrainian National Academic Brass Orchestra, Kostyantyn Starovytskyi passed away while engaged in combat on the Kramatorsk front in the Donbas region.
The 40-year-old bassoonist, who was also a conductor and producer, was nominated for multiple honors for his work on Gaetano Donizetti’s comedic opera Rita for the 150-year-old Kyiv Opera.
In the early days following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February of last year, Starovytskyi—better known to his friends and coworkers as Kostey—traded his instrument for a weapon.
According to the news site Ukrainian Pravda, he was initially involved in defending his home city of Brovary before serving in Kharkiv.
The website said Anhelina Karpenko, a singer, wrote in tribute: ‘Once we worked on a production together. Kostey was conducting, and I was singing.
‘We dreamt about the stage, and found an amazing team. Now he will play his music with the heavenly orchestra.’
In a Facebook post, the Kyiv Opera wrote: ‘Another irreparable loss for Ukrainian culture, for our theater, in particular.
‘Kostyantyn Starovytskyi, our colleague, who was in the orchestra at the Kyiv Opera, and later the conductor-producer of Donizetti’s opera “Rita” and one of the directors and authors of the Ukrainian translation of Rossini’s opera “The Marriage Contract”, died while defending the country.
‘Glory to the Hero! Eternal memory! Glory to Ukraine!’
Starovytskyi’s young daughter Yeva, wife Snizhana and elderly mother Liudmyla survive him. A farewell ceremony was held in Brovary, east of Kyiv, this morning.
The war against Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been devastating for culture in Ukraine.
Just a week after the invasion last year, missiles and rockets hit the opera house and concert hall in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, killing at least 10 people and injuring 35.
Most notoriously, Russian bombs destroyed a theatre in Mariupol where civilians were sheltering on March 16 2022, killing as many as 600 people according to the Associated Press.
A New York Times investigation from December found 339 Ukrainian cultural sites that had ‘sustained significant damage’ in the war.
However, artists have also been at the forefront of showing defiance against the invaders.
In March last year, a small band was filmed performing in front of the barricades protecting the Kyiv Opera House.
Another video, in which violin players from around the world virtually join a Ukrainian musician in a bomb shelter to play the folk song ‘Verbovaya Doschechka’, went viral soon afterwards.\