Evgenii Vasilevich Ureke

Born Mar. 7 (20), 1917, in Mogilev. Soviet Moldavian actor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1967).

Ureke graduated from the Kishinev Conservatory in 1939 and joined the company of the A. S. Pushkin Moldavian Music and Drama Theater in Kishinev in 1940. His best roles have included the Mayor in Gogol’s The Inspector-General, Arbenin in Ler-montov’s Masquerade, Egor Bulychov in Gorky’s Egor Bulychov and the Others, the title roles in Shakespeare’s King Lear and Molière’s Tartuffe, Ovid and Horace in Aleksandri’s Ovid and The Fountain of Blanduzia, and Shadrin and Zabelin in Pogodin’s Man With a Gun and The Kremlin Chimes.

A versatile and original actor, Ureke has also appeared in operas and operettas, for example, in the title role of Rubinstein’s The Demon, and as Gremin in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Karas in Gulak-Artemovskii’s The Zaporozhian Cossack Beyond the Danube, and Grandfather Atanas in Miliutin’s Trembita.

Ureke has been awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1950), two orders, and various medals.