Petrusenko, Oksana (Петрусенко, Оксана; real surname: Бородавкіна; Borodavkina), b 18 February 1900 in Balakliia, Kupiansk county, Kharkiv gubernia, d 15 July 1940 in Kyiv. Opera and concert singer (lyric and dramatic soprano). A student of Panas Saksahansky, from 1916 she appeared with traveling troupes of I. Sahatovsky, V. Krasenko, and Saksahansky, and subsequently (1927–33) sang in the opera theaters of Kazan, Samara, and Sverdlovsk. From 1934 she was a soloist of the Kyiv Opera (see National Opera of Ukraine), with which she appeared as Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto, Natasha in Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky’s Rusalka, Koupava in Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden, Yaroslavna in Aleksandr Borodin’s Prince Igor, Oksana and Odarka in Semen Hulak-Artemovsky’s Zaporozhian Cossack beyond the Danube, and Natalka in Mykola Lysenko’s Natalka from Poltava. She was also noted for her performances of Ukrainian folk song arrangements. Biographies of Petrusenko were written by Yukhym Martych (1961), H. Filipenko (1964), and M. Kaharlytsky (1973).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]