Fomin was born in St. Petersburg into the family of a cannoneer, an artillery soldier of the Tobolsk infantry regiment. His father died when he was 6, and he passed into the care of his stepfather, I. Fedotov, a soldier. Fedotov took him to the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg on 21 April 1767, where Fomin studied architecture. As a full student there, he began learning the harpsichord in 1776 with Matteo Bumi. From 1777 he studied theory and composition with Hermann Raupach, and from 1779 with Blasius Sartori. In 1782 he went to Bologna to study with Padre Martini and Stanislao Mattei; three years later he was accepted into the Accademia filarmonica. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1785, he taught at the theatrical school and composed operas. From 1797 he was répétiteur for the imperial theater under Paul I. He composed about 30 operas including Yamshchiki na podstave ; Vecherinki ; Orfey i Evridika, Amerikantsy , and Zolotoye yabloko . The most successful for decades was his opera-melodrama Orfey i Evridika to a text by Yakov Knyazhnin. It was re-staged in Soviet times in 1947 in Moscow, and in 1953 and in 1961 in Leningrad. The famous one-act opera Anyuta to a text by Mikhail Popov has been occasionally attributed to Fomin. In addition, Fomin has been credited with the music of another successful Russian opera Melnik – koldun, obmanshchik i svat, on a subject resembling Rousseau’s Le devin du village: it is possible that this was his revision of the music compiled by a theatre violin player, Mikhail Sokolovsky.
Orfey i Evridika European Festival Orchestra, conductor William Keitel, 20 July 2004, 1CD, Arte Nova Records
Orfeo ed Euridice. Performed by Maria Shorstova, Alexey Ivashchenko et al., The Horn Orchestra of Russia, Pratum Integrum Orchestra, cond. Pavel Serbin. Recorded in 2008. Moscow, Russia: Essential Music, ℗2009. Caro Mitis CM 0012008
The Americans cond. Vladimir Andropov. USSR Bolshoi Theatre Chamber Orchestra C10 28271 009
The Coachmen cond. Nikolai Anosov. tapes in All-Union Radio Archive. ~ first revival since premiere.
Orchestral, chamber and instrumental
The Golden Age - Moscow Concertino ensemble of soloists
Quotations
"Yevstigney Fomin, one of the most talented composers of his day and age and the founding father of Russian musical drama, also died in poverty... His melodrama, based on the well-known legend about Orpheus and Eurydice, is a real masterpiece whose red-hot passions and tragic collisions have since been put to music with equal excellence. Orpheus premiered at Count Nikolai Sheremetev’s theatre in 1792 to the strains of a choir, orchestra and with a large cast of ballet dancers and actors. For more than two decades Orpheus ran thousands of times to invariable applause of local and visiting theatergoers. And still, the money Fomin earned for his labors was dwarfed by the exorbitant royalties picked up by his Italian colleagues invited to work in St. Petersburg.
