Chastii, Nikolai

Born Mar. 25 (Apr. 7), 1905, in the city of Valki, in what is now Kharkov Oblast; died Nov. 18, 1962, in Kiev. Soviet Ukrainian singer (bass). People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1941).

In 1929, Chastii graduated from the Kharkov Institute of Music and Drama, where he studied under N. L. Chemezov. He was a soloist at the Kharkov Theater of Opera and Ballet from 1927 to 1934, at the Georgian Theater of Opera and Ballet from 1941 to 1944, and at the Ukrainian Theater of Opera and Ballet from 1934 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1958. Chastii excelled in the title role in Glinka’s Ivan Susanin and as Tsangala in Paliashvili’s Daisi, Karas’ in Gulak-Artemovskii’s The Zaporozhian Cossack Beyond the Danube, the Elected Official in Lysenko’s Natalka from Poltava, Mephistopheles in Gounod’s Faust, and Kecal in Smetana’s The Bartered Bride. He also gave concerts and recitals of folk songs and works of Russian and Soviet composrs.

Chastii was awarded the State Prize of the USSR in 1950.