Dmitri Hvorostovsky's Wife And Children: Who The Opera Singer Is Survived By

Dmitri Aleksandrovich Hvorostovsky, the Russian opera singer with a dark grained voice and commanding stage presence, died at the age of 55 from brain cancer.

Hvorostovsky died Wednesday at a hospital near his home in London after a two-and- a-half year battle with the disease.

Hvorostovsky was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia on Oct. 16, 1962, and studied at the Krasnoyarsk School of Arts. He made his debut as a singer at the Krasnoyarsk Opera House. He came into prominence, at least in Russia, after he emerged as the winner at both the Russian Gkinka Competition in 1987 and the Toulouse Singing Competition in 1988.

He married his first wife, Svetlana, a former ballet dancer in 1989. But Hvorostovsky’s behavior contributed to the breakup of the marriage. The couple met while Hvorostovsky was working in the state theatre in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and Svetlana was in the Corps de Ballet nearby.

Their marriage came the same year when Hvorostovsky won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, bringing the Russian singer to the notice of the Western World.

Five years later the couple moved to London, where their twin boys — Daniel and Alexandra — were born in 1996. However, their relationship ended in 2001 and in the divorce proceedings in Feb. 2001, the couple agreed to a settlement of £113,000 alimony a year to be paid to Svetlana, according to a report in the Telegraph. In 2015, Svetlana died from complications of meningitis.

Hvorostovsky gave up drinking on New Year’s Day in 2001. And the same year he married the Swiss-born soprano Florence Illi. Hvorostovsky had been to Geneva for a performance where he sang with the then 29-year-old Illi.

Illi soon became involved in the life of the Russian tenor voice and became his indispensable companion. In the first year of life with Hvorostovsky, she learned conversational Russian language, and started traveling around the world with him. Sometimes the couple also performed together. The couple has two children. Their son Maxim was born in 2003 while daughter Nina was born in 2007.

Hvorostovsky retired from the opera stage at the end of 2016 due to complications from the brain tumor. He made his final public appearance in a “Dmitri and Friends” concert at Austria’s Grafenegg Festival on June 22-23.

In September, he was awarded the "Order of Merit" for the Fatherland of the IV degree. It is one of the highest non-military honors in his native Russia. He was awarded this for his great contribution to Russian art and culture by Russia President Vladimir Putin.

Hvorostovsky was known as “the Elvis of opera”. In June 2015 it was announced that he had been diagnosed with the tumor. However, he returned to New York’s Metropolitan Opera three months later to sing the Count di Luna in Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” and was warmly greeted by musicians in the orchestra, who threw white roses on him during the curtain calls.