Born in Vaslovitsy in Chernovitsky Region (Ukraine). Graduated from the Leningrad State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire in 1991 (class of Professor N. Serval). Was invited to join the Kirov (Mariinsky) Opera Company while still a fourth year student in 1990. People's Artist of Russia. Prize-winner at the BBC International Opera Singers' Competition (Cardiff, 1993). Prize-winner at the International Rimsky-Korsakov Young Opera Singers' Competition (1st prize, St Petersburg, 1994). Recipient of the Golden Sofit, St Petersburg's highest theatre prize (1999). Recipient of the Fortissimo music prize, founded by the St Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire ("Performing skills" category). At the Mariinsky Theatre he has performed the roles of:


Pastor (Khovanshchina),
Shchelkalov (Boris Godunov),
Onegin (Eugene Onegin),
Robert (Iolanta),
Tomsky, Yeletsky (The Queen of Spades),
Pantalone (Love for Three Oranges),
Napoleon (War and Peace),
Figaro (Il barbiere di Siviglia),
Enrico (Lucia di Lammermoor),
Giorgio Germont (La traviata),
Renato (Un ballo in maschera),
Don Carlo (La forza del destino),
Marquis of Posa (Don Carlo),
Macbeth (Macbeth),
Amonasro (Aida),
Ford (Falstaff),
Marcello (La boheme),
Sharpless (Madama Butterfly),
Valentin (Faust)
Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro).

Repertoire also includes: the Duke (The Miserly Knight), Baleario (Salammbo), Papageno (Die Zauberflote), Julius Caesar (Julius Caesar), Simon Boccanegra (Simon Boccanegra), Riccardo (I puritani), Alfio (La cavalleria rusticana), Filippo Maria Visconti (Beatrice di Tenda), Tonio (I pagliacci), Don Carlo (Ernani) and di Luna (Il trovatore).

Has toured with the Mariinsky Opera Company to Spain, Italy, Scotland (Edinburgh Festival), Finland (Mikkeli Festival), France and Portugal. Guest soloist with the world's leading opera houses, among them the Opera Bastille (Paris), the Semperoper (Dresden), the Deutsche Oper and the Staatsoper (Berlin), the Metropolitan Opera (New York), the Wiener Staatsoper, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (London), La Fenice (Venice), the National Opera of Canada (Toronto), the Teatro Colon (Buenos Aires), the Teatro San Paolo (Brazil), the Opera Santiago de Chile, La Scala (Milan) and opera houses in Amsterdam and Bergen.

Has a busy concert schedule. He has taken part in a concert by young soloists of Pacific Ocean nations at the San Francisco Opera, performed a solo programme at the Theatre du Chatelet and sung a concert of bel canto music with the Symphony Orchestra of Belgium. Has performed in New York (Carnegie Hall) and London (Royal Albert Hall) with the Dallas and New York Symphony Orchestras. He has appeared with such outstanding conductors as Valery Gergiev, Riccardo Muti, Myung-Whun Chung, Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink and Fabio Luisi.