Veniamin Tolba was a Ukrainian Soviet conductor and music teacher. He was born on 30 October (12 November) 1909 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, and began his musical career as a violinist in the symphony orchestra of the Kharkiv First Travelling Opera.
From 1926 to 1928, Tolba studied with Pavel Ryazanov at the Leningrad Central Music Technical School. In 1932 he graduated from the Kharkiv Music and Drama Institute, where he studied composition with Semion Bohatyrev and conducting with Yakiv Rosenstein. He also attended advanced conducting courses in Kharkiv and studied with Heinrich Adler.
Tolba made his conducting debut in 1928. He was a conductor at the Kharkiv Opera from 1931 to 1941, with interruptions, and at the T. H. Shevchenko Kyiv Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre from 1944 to 1959, also with interruptions. He taught at the Kharkiv Conservatory between 1932 and 1941 and, from 1946 to 1973, at the P. I. Tchaikovsky Kyiv Conservatory. He became a professor in 1962.
In 1949, Tolba received the second-degree Stalin Prize for conducting a production of Mikhail Glinka's opera Ivan Susanin. He was named People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR in 1957 and received two Orders of the Red Banner of Labour, in 1960 and 1971. In the 1955 film Stars on Wings, he appeared as conductor of the Orchestra of the Ministry of Culture of the Ukrainian SSR.
Tolba lived in Kyiv from 1944 until his death on 13 April 1984. A commemorative plaque has been installed on his former home at 21 Pushkin Street.