Gulyam Abdurahmonov

Gulyam Abdurahmonov was born on 14 May 1910 (1 May in the old style) in the town of Turkestan, then part of the Syr-Darya Oblast of the Russian Empire and now in Kazakhstan. He was a tenor.

He began performing in 1929 at the Samarkand music theatre. He then studied singing at the Uzbek Opera Studio attached to the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and graduated in 1939.

From 1939 to 1955 Abdurahmonov was a soloist of the Uzbek opera and ballet theatre (now the Alisher Navoi Grand Theatre). His roles included Kadyr in Glière and Sadykov’s “Gulsara”, Majnun in “Leyli and Majnun”, Tahir in “Tahir and Zuhra” and Farhad in “Farhad and Shirin” by Jalilov and Brovtsyn, Jura in “Buran” by Ashrafi and Vasilenko, Butanuz in Ashrafi’s “The Great Canal” and Rovshan in Hajibeyov’s “Koroghlu”.

In 1950 he was named People’s Artist of the Uzbek SSR. In 1951 he received a Stalin Prize, third class, for singing Kadyr in “Gulsara”; he was awarded the Order of the Badge of Honour that year and again in 1959, and his decorations also include the medal “For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945”.

From 1954 to 1980 he was a soloist of the Uzbek Philharmonic, performing opera arias and songs in concert. His wife, Zukhra Fayziyeva, was also an opera singer; their daughter Dilbar (1936–2018) became a conductor and People’s Artist of the USSR.

Gulyam Abdurahmonov died on 15 May 1987.