People's Artist of the USSR, famous singer Zurab Sotkilava has died aged 80 after battling with a severe illness, the director general of the Bolshoi Theatre Vladimir Urin said.
Sotkilava who was born in Sukhumi and was a 1960 graduate of the Tbilisi State Polytechnical Institute.
In 1965 he graduated from the Tbilisi Conservatory where he was under guidance from David Andguladze and from 1965 to 1974 was a soloist of the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre named after Zakaria Paliashvili.
From 1966 to 1968 he was a student at La Scala where his teacher was Dinaro Barra and following that became a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory where he remained till 1988. Six years later he became chairman of the International Tchaikovsky Competition and was a member of the Bologna Academy of Music at which he became known for his singing of Giuseppe Verdi's works.
