- Founder of the Moscow Chamber Opera Theater.
- He and his first wife, director Anna Alekseevna Nekrasova, had one son, concertmaster Aleksandr Pokrovskiy, and one daughter, actress Alla Pokrovskaya. Alla, in turn, is the mother of his grandson, actor Mikhail Efremov. He was survived at his death in 2009 by grandson Mikhail and five great-grandchildren, Mikhail's children, actors Nikita Efremov and Nikolay Efremov, and daughters Anna-Mariya, Vera, and Nadezhda.
- He was associated with the Gorky Opera and the Ballet Theater before joining the Bolshoi Opera in 1943.
- He graduated from the State Institute of Theatrical Arts.
- He was named the People's Artist of the Soviet Union in 1961.
- He joined the Bolshoi Opera in 1943 as a director and later became its chief producer until he retired in 1982.
- He felt that, in opera, the singing and the acting are equally important; neither should be subordinate to the other.
- In 1961, he staged a bootleg production of "Porgy and Bess" by George Gershwin, in a Moscow basement with a cast of drama students.
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