Mikhail Ivanovich Verikovskii

Born Nov. 8 (20), 1896, in Kremenets; died June 14, 1962, in Kiev. Soviet composer, teacher, and conductor. Honored Art Worker of the Ukrainian SSR (1944).

Verikovskii graduated from the Kiev Conservatory in 1923 from B. L. Iavorskii’s composition class. He is the composer of works in various genres, including the first Ukrainian ballet Pan Kanevskii (staged in 1931 in Kharkov). He also composed the first Ukrainian symphonic works, including the suite entitled Vesnianki (1924) and Tatar Suite (1928); the operas Heavenly Affairs (1934), Sotnik (staged in 1939 in Odessa), The Woman Farm Laborer (staged in Irkutsk in 1943) based on narrative poems by T. G. Shevchenko, Glory (1961), and The Refugees (performed over the radio in Kiev in 1957); oratorios; cantatas, including the October Cantata (1936); choral works (more than 40); and art songs. He also made arrangements of folk songs (60) and orchestrated the works of N. V. Lysenko, P. I. Nishchinskii, N. N. Arkas, and other composers. He appeared as an opera and symphony conductor. He also taught and became a professor at the Kiev Conservatory in 1946.