He studied at the
Ural State Conservatory in
Sverdlovsk. After graduating from the Conservatory, he sang at the Sverdlovsk Opera and Ballet Theater. In 1955, he became a soloist of the State Russian Opera and Ballet Theater in
Stalino. Amongst his most notable performances were those at the
Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. The most successful roles are Germont ("
La traviata" by
G. Verdi), Onegin ("
Eugene Onegin" by
P. Tchaikovsky), Valentin ("
Faust" by
C. Gounod), Count Di Luna ("
Il trovatore" by G. Verdi), Figaro ("
The Barber of Seville" by
G. Rossini). Vocal works such as "The Russian Field", "
On the Nameless Height", "
My Kiev", "
Song of Restless Youth", were especially popular with listeners. the romance "Along the street the snowstorm sweeps", considered folk songs "From behind the island on the Strezhen" and "The Cliff of Stenka Razin", a number of Russian folk songs, in particular "
Vdol po Piterskoy". Gulyayev toured the Soviet Union and abroad a lot: he performed in
Austria,
Belgium,
Bulgaria,
Hungary,
GDR, Canada,
Cuba,
Poland, United States, France,
Czechoslovakia, Switzerland,
Yugoslavia, Japan and other countries. In 1964 he performed at the
Olympia in Paris. The singer's last recording took place on 12 April 1986, on
Cosmonautics Day – it was a teleconference with cosmonauts
Solovyov and
Kizim, who were in orbit. The singer performed a song "My beloved waved a handkerchief at the gate" to his own accompaniment on the
accordion. He was named a
People's Artist of the USSR in 1968. Gulyayev died on 23 April 1986 of heart failure at the age of 55. == Personal life ==