Zoia Gaidai

She was an artist of wide creativity, with a bright vocal range and talent who staged more than 50 musicals of the works of Ukrainian and Russian composers, as well as works of the classical repertoire of Western European composers.

She kept close contact with other composers of her time, such as Mykola Lysenko, Boris Lyatoshynsky, Viktor Kosenko, and Levko Revutsky.

During World War II she was evacuated to Ufa along with her husband, singer-tenor Nikolai Platonov (Nicholas Platonovich Slutsky), and other artists of the Kiev Opera.

From 1947 to 1965, she taught at the Kiev Conservatory, having become a professor of this institution in 1963, a position that she held until her death.

As part of the classical repertoire, she also appeared in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin as Tat’iana, as the lead character of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden, Cio-Cio-San in Puccini's Madame Butterfly, and Violetta from Verdi's La Traviata.