Сomposer Sergei Cortez Died

Yesterday, on the same day with actor Rostislav Yankovsky, died classics of Belarusian music, composer Sergei Cortez.

On 26 June, People's Artist of Belarus composer Sergei Cortez died at the age of 82. The composer's son – also Sergei Cortez – informed about that at about 20.30 on his Facebook page, BelaPAN reports.

In the 20 years of the twentieth century, Cortes’s mother’s family emigrated from Russia to Chile. Sergei Cortes’s father is Chilean. The future composer was born on February 18, 1935 and the first 20 years of his life lived in Argentina, he studied music in Buenos Aires. In 1947, his family filed a petition for Soviet citizenship. The arrival in the USSR became possible in 1955. Minsk was defined as the place of their residence, where Cortes graduated from Professor Bahatyriou’s composition class of the Belarusian State Conservatory.

Sergei Cortez is the author of dozens of musical scores for dramatic performances staged in different years in the National Academic Theatre named after Yanka Kupala, the National Academic Drama Theater named after Maxim Gorky, the Youth Theatre, the Theatre of Young Spectator, the National Academic Drama Theater named after Yakub Kolas. He also wrote music for many films, including such popular ones as “I'll Take Your Pain” and “Black Alshanski Castle.”

Instrumental, as well as vocal and vocal-symphonic cycles based on poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Yanka Kupala, Maksim Tank, Garcia Lorca, Nicolás Guillén, Jacques Lenoir brought international fame to the composer.

Since 1991 Sergei Cortez was the director of the State Opera and Ballet Theatre, and artistic director of the opera, from 1996 to 2002 he headed the Bolshoi National Academic Opera Theatre.

The composer wrote five operas: “Giordano Bruno,” “Mother Courage,” “Visit of the Lady,” as well as one-act “Jubilee” and “Bear” after stories by Anton Chekhov. His ballet “The Last Inca” was successfully staged in Havana.