Biography
Maksym Berezovsky was born on 27 October 1745 in Hlukhiv, in what is now north-eastern Ukraine, and is regarded as one of the founders of Russian-Ukrainian polyphonic church singing. From 1769 he studied in Bologna with Padre Giovanni Battista Martini on the recommendation of the Russian court, graduating with distinction as 'maestro di musica' in 1771 and becoming a member of the Bologna Philharmonic Academy. Commissioned by the Russian fleet commander Count Alexei Orlov, whose squadron was wintering at Livorno in Tuscany, he composed the opera 'Demofont' there in 1773 to Metastasio's libretto – the first opera by a Russian, and by a Ukrainian, composer. Back in St Petersburg he worked at the court chapel; he died there in 1777 under circumstances that remain unclear, and the account of suicide already circulating in the 19th century is questioned by more recent scholars.
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