Ivan Kozlovsky was born in the village of Marianivka near Bila Tserkva, the Kyiv Governorate, in Ukraine and began to sing at the age of seven in the choir of the St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery.

He went on to study drama, piano and singing (with the famous soprano Olena Muravyova) at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University.

This instruction was cut short after two years, due to the outbreak of the civil war in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.

Kozlovsky had a friendly rivalry with Sergei Lemeshev, another opera singer immensely popular in Soviet Union.

After his first marriage ended in divorce, Kozlovsky remarried, this time to an actress 14 years younger, Galina Sergeyeva.

Sergeyeva played the female lead in the films Pyshka (Пышкa) ("Boule de Suif," 1934), Lyubov Alyony (Любoвь Aлёны) ("Alyona's Love", 1934), and Vesennie dni (Весенние дни) ("Spring Days", 1934).

Kozlovsky gave many concerts throughout the Soviet Union, singing Russian and Ukrainian songs and romances, as well as German lieder by Schubert, Schumann, and Liszt.

Kozlovsky was also the author of numerous memoirs about Ukrainian singers O. Petrusevych, Mykhailo Donets, M. Mykysh, Borys Hmyria and others.

[c] Kozlovsky sang more than 50 operatic roles, and was especially famous as Lensky in Eugene Onegin, Berendey in The Snow Maiden, Levko in May Night, the Indian Guest in Sadko, Vladimir in Prince Igor, Nero in the opera by Anton Rubinstein, Dubrovsky in the opera by Eduard Nápravník, and so on.

[3] "They say that Ivan Kozlovsky considered his voice as his one and only possession and prayed every morning thanking the Lord for the priceless gift He gave him..." (Olga Fyodorova, Music portraits, see the link below) "Lemeshev is a far more lyric and tender Gherman than those to whom we’ve become accustomed.