| Biography | Zurab Lavrentievich Sotkilava (March 12, 1937) is a Georgian opera singer and Meritorious Artist recipient 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. By 2000 he became Kinoshok chairman of Anapa Film Festival which was hosted throughout the CIS and Baltic States |