The baritone Igor Morosow (usually spelled ‘Morozov’ in English) was born in the Ukraine, studied at the famous Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and immediately received a contract as leading baritone of the first opera house in the Soviet Union, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, where he sang important roles for 15 years. He won in the International Competition for Young Singers in Sofia, Bulgaria. In 1991 Igor Morosow gained the highest award for artists in Russia, the title “Narodni Artist Rossii” (People’s Artist of Russia). In 2002 he was awarded by the Saint George’s medal of the International Evaluation of Arts and Sciences ‘Golden Fortune’.

Since1991 he has worked as a freelance singer at leading opera houses in Western Europe and the USA as well as at many festivals, including the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper unter den Linden, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Frankfort, Weimar, Vienna, Salzburg, Bregenz, Budapest, Palermo, Milan, Zurich, St Gallen, Basel, Strasbourg, Montpellier, Amsterdam, Copenhaghe, Stockholm, Dublin, Houston Grand Opera, Boston Festival, Ljubljana Festival, Zagreb, Thessaloniki, in productions such as Eugene Onegin (debut in 1991 at the Staatsoper in Vienna), as well as in War and Peace (Viennese Konzerthaus ) and Shostakovich’s Michelangelo-Suite (Concertgebouw Amsterdam).

He is in demand for Italian repertoire (Verdi’s Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra, Nabucco, La Traviata (Gérmont), Il Trovatore (Conte di Luna), Aida (Amonasro), Otello (Iago), Un Ballo in Maschera (Renato), Don Carlo (Rodrigo), Luisa Miller (Miller); Puccini’s Tosca ( Scarpia), Madama Butterfly (Sharpless); Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda (Filippo); Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (Tonio and Silvio); Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana (Alfio); Donizetti’s Anna Bolena (Lord Rochefort). He sang the title role in the first Italian performance of Szymanowski’s King Roger (Il Re Ruggero), and also sings German operatic roles (Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte (Guglielmo); Max von Schillings’s Mona Lisa (Francesco) and Russian leading roles (Tchaikovsky Eugene Onegin, Mazeppa, Iolantha (Robert, Eben Haghia), Pique Dame (Yeletzki, Tomski), The Maid of Orléans (Lionel); Prokofiev’s War and Peace (Andrey Bolkonsky, Napoléon), Betrothal in a Monastery (Ferdinand); Rimski-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden (Msigir); Shostakovitch’s The Nose (the leading role of Kovalyov), and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Boris Ismailov).

Igor Morosow has worked with conductors including Lorin Maazel, Fabio Luisi, Ferdinand Leitner, Marcello Viotti, Valery Gergiev, Yuri Simonov, Gennadi Rozhdestvenski, Boris Haikin, Pinchas Steinberg, Carlo Franci, Vladimir Fedosseyev, Ernst Märzendorfer, Jiri Kout und Anton Guadagno, stage directors like Götz Friedrich, August Everding, Klaus Guth, Pier Luigi Pier’Alli, Krzysztof Zanussi and singers Barbara Frittoli, Mara Zampieri, Ana-Maria Martinez, Noëmi Nadelmann, Edita Gruberova, Lucia Aliberti, Anna Tomova-Sintov, Elena Obraztsova, Irina Archipova, Tamara Milashkina, Nikolai Ghiaurov, Evgeni Nesterenko, Valdimir Atlantov, Vincenzo La Scola, Peter Dvorski, Neil Shicoff, Francisco Araiza, Roberto Saccà, Matti Salminen, Guiseppe Giacomini and Fabio Armiliato.

Igor Morosow also performs in rare, new or forgotten masterpieces such as the first performance of the cycle Uskaya Lyra by Arthur Lourié in Basle, the first performance of the opera Schwarzerde (the lead role of Parnok) by Klaus Huber or arias and songs by Anton Rubinstein and Reinhold Glière. In addition, he frequently sings cycles by Mussorgsky (Songs and Dances of Death), Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13 Babi Yar and song cycles by Georgi Sviridov (he gave the first performance of the entire cycle My Father is a Farmer accompanied by the composer)

Woody Allen chose his interpretation of Iago’s Dream from Verdi’s Otello and the Otello/Iago duet with Janez Lotric for his Hollywood film Match Point.

Igor Morosow has recorded many CDs and DVDs, among which are Beatrice di Tenda, Nabucco, Aida, Il Trovatore, Otello and The Snow Maiden. After many very successful concerts all over Western Europe together with the Scherzo Quartet, he’s recorded a CD with masterpieces of classical music from Stradella and Rossini to Mussorgski and Tchesnokov.