Osip Afanasievich Petrov was a Russian operatic bass-baritone of great range and renown, whose career centred on St Petersburg.
Biography
Osip Petrov was born in Yelisavetgrad (now Kropyvnytskyi) in Ukraine, then part of Russia. He started his career by singing in a church chorus. Petrov then worked in Russian provincial theaters (including Poltava, where he worked together with Mikhail Shchepkin).
From 1830 until his death in 1878 he worked for the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. His career was one triumph after another, and he created a number of important roles in Russian operas, by composers such as Dargomyzhsky, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Anton Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky and others.
