She was a soprano and voice teacher born in Moscow, Russia to a musical family where her her mother, Olga Laroche was a pianist whose father was the musicologist Herman Laroche and her godfather was the composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Her father was a violist and a director at the Rostov music conservatory and she was the god-daughter of the librettist and dramatist Modest Tchaikovsky who was the younger brother of Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
She studied voice and piano at the Moscow Conservatory and in 1918 fled Russia following the Russian Revolution with her husband, the violinist Paul Fedorovsky, and their baby daughter, the choreographer Irina Lasoff. They went across Russia and into Manchuria and settled for a few years in Beijing before relocating to Boston, Massachusetts in 1924.
Her husband became a violinist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and she performed as a solo soprano with the orchestra on regular occasions when it was led by the conductor Serge Koussvitzky.
During her singing career she worked with composers that included Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Joseph Ravel, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky among others. She toured America with the pianist Alexander Soloti and the cellist Piatogorsky as a joint recitalist and as a solo recitalist was credited with establishing the success of Chansons madecasses by Ravel.
Recordings she performed on include French Songs and South American Chamber Music.
In the field of musical education she lectured at Harvard University and was a voice teacher at Middlebury College, the New School of Music, Wellesley College and the Longy School of Music where she was head of the Voice Department from 1938 to 1976 and giving masterclasses there after she retired until 1987. She continued giving private lessons until just a few days before she died. Her book the Principles and Art of Singing was written in the late 1970s and revised until 1987 before her daughter edited it and posthumously published it in 1989.
She passed away in her sleep at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts when she was 93 years old.
Sources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Averino
- https://web.archive.org/web/20110517002005/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8104823.html
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/175426840/olga-averino
- https://web.archive.org/web/20110517002005/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8104823.html
- https://web.archive.org/web/20110517001946/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-145534211.html
- https://archives.bso.org/Search.aspx?searchType=Performance&Work=Egmont:%20Incidental%20Music,%20Op.%2084:%20(09)%20Melodrama:%20%22S%C3%BCsser%20Schlaf%22&Composer=Ludwig%20van%20Beethoven
- https://mouritz.org/library/database/item/principles-and-art-of-singing
- https://www.discogs.com/artist/7749940-Olga-Averino