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 Buini. 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 [
The Coachmen at the Relay Station] (1787);
Vecherinki [
Soirées] (1788);
Orfey i Evridika (1792),
Amerikantsy [
The Americans] (a comic opera) (1800), and
Zolotoye yabloko [
The Golden Apple] (performed after the composer's death in 1803). 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. In 2008 it was performed in Moscow for the first time on period instruments by Pratum Intergum orchestra under Pavel Serbin (conducting) and Rossiiskij Rogovoi Orkestr (Russin horn-band, St.Petersburg). The famous one-act opera
Anyuta to a text by
Mikhail Popov has been occasionally attributed to Fomin (which is not a certainty). In addition, Fomin has been credited with the music of another successful Russian opera
Melnik – koldun, obmanshchik i svat (
The miller who was a wizard, a cheat and a matchmaker,
Moscow, 1779), 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. ==Operas==