Nikita Storojev is among both the most prominent and versatile Russian basses from the latter half of the 20th century. His rich, powerful voice can project a velvety darkness or triumphant stateliness or stentorian dominance. Storojev has scored numerous critical successes in Russian, Italian, German, and French opera, with such works as Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov (Boris, Vaarlam, Pimen), Prokofiev's War and Peace (Kutuzov, Napoleon), Verdi's Aida (Ramphis), Puccini's Tosca (Scarpia), Wagner's Das Rheingold and Siegfried (Fafner), Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle (Bluebeard), Bizet's Carmen (Escamillo), and countless others. He has demonstrated the same eclecticism and variety in concert and song repertory, performing in Mozart's and Verdi's respective Requiems, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13 and No. 14, Górecki's Beatus vir, and in various Russian song fare by Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and others. Storojev has appeared at the major opera houses and concert halls in Moscow, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Milan, London, and New York. He has made numerous recordings for Chandos, Decca, and DG, among other labels. Nikita Storojev was born in 1950 in Kharbin, China, to Russian parents. From 1955 he lived in Russia. He studied philosophy at the University of Sverdlovsk from 1970-1972, but then turned to music, studying voice at the Mussorgsky Conservatory of Yekaterinburg from 1972-1975, and then at the Moscow Conservatory from 1975-1978. Among his teachers were Ian Voutiras and renowned Russian bass Evgeny Nesterenko. Storojev was principal soloist with both the Bolshoi Opera and Philharmonic Society of Moscow from 1976-1981. He served in the same capacity at the Dusseldorf-based Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 1983-1985. By this time he was already freelancing at major opera houses and as a guest-soloist at concert halls across the globe with such conductors as Svetlanov, Gergiev, Rozhdestvensky, Rostropovich, Järvi, Nagano, and other notables. His recordings were beginning to draw notice now, too: Storojev received a Diapason d'Or award in 1987 for the Chandos CD of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 14, and for the same composer's Symphony No. 13 he was given a Choc de la Musique in 1992. Throughout the 1990s he remained active on all fronts, and in 2001 he joined the faculty at the University of Texas Butler School of Music as associate professor of voice and opera. Despite his teaching duties, which include conducting master classes in various venues across the globe, Storojev has continued to appear in operatic, concert, and recital performances throughout the first decade of the new century.