Sergey Pototsky was a Soviet composer, film composer, and musician, born in Tambov on September 19, 1883. He graduated from the philological faculty of Moscow University and studied with Sergei Taneyev from 1904 to 1908.
Pototsky graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in piano under Konstantin Igumnov in 1914 and in composition under Sergei Vasilenko in 1916. From 1917 to 1918 he conducted opera at the I. P. Kalyayev People's House in Moscow, then headed the music department of the Moscow Art Theatre-2 from 1918 to 1921. In 1930, the Bolshoi Theatre staged his opera Breakthrough, one of the first operas on a Soviet theme.
He wrote four operas: Breakthrough (1930), Black Sea (1937), Stepan Razin (1950), and Admiral Ushakov (1957). His other works included the cantata Homeland, orchestral and piano pieces, romances, and music for plays and films. His film scores included Storm (1931), The Accordion and Four Visits of Samuel Wulf (1934), In the Footsteps of the Hero, Black Mouth (Kara-Bugaz)—written with Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov—and By the Bluest of Seas (1935), Chance Meeting (1936), The Ballad of Cossack Golota (1937), Riders (1939), The Fifth Ocean (1940), and Bohdan Khmelnytsky (1941). Later film work included Young Years, The Wonderful Violin, Young Partisans, and Combat Film Collection No. 9 (1942); We Are from the Urals and The Prince and the Pauper (1943); Kashchey the Immortal and Ivan Nikulin: Russian Sailor (1944); Liberated Land and An Old-Fashioned Vaudeville (1946); A Boy from the Outskirts (1947); May Night, or The Drowned Woman (1952); and Through the Eyes of Cinema (1955). Pototsky was the father of philologist Nina Pavlova.
He died in Moscow on January 29, 1958, and was buried at Vagankovo Cemetery.