In 1978 he graduated from the Vocal Faculty of the Gavriil Muzicescu Kishinev State Institute of Arts (class of P. Botezat) and was invited to join the Magtumguly Ashgabat State Opera and Ballet Theatre as a soloist (Chief Conductor Kh. Allanurov).
For seven years he performed leading tenor roles at the theatre, including:
- the Duke (Verdi «Rigoletto»);
- Alfredo (Verdi «La Traviata»);
- Count Almaviva (Rossini «Il barbiere di Siviglia»);
- Riccardo (Verdi «Un ballo in maschera»);
- Lensky (Tchaikovsky «Eugene Onegin»);
- Vaudémont (Tchaikovsky «Iolanta»);
- Don José (Bizet «Carmen»);
- Paolino (Cimarosa «Il matrimonio segreto»).
During this period his stage partners included P. Lisitsian, T. Milashkina, E. Nesterenko, V. Malchenko, and O. Klenov.
From 1985 to 1988 he worked at the Kishinev State Opera and Ballet Theatre, where he sang Lensky (with S. Leiferkus as Onegin), Riccardo (conductor A. Gershfeld), and the title role in Verdi’s «Il trovatore» (conductor V. Mochalov). At the same time he taught at the Gavriil Muzicescu Kishinev State Conservatory.
Since 1988 he has been a member of the Bolshoi Theatre Chorus in Moscow. In addition to his choral work, in 2001 he sang the role of Second Croupier in Prokofiev’s opera «The Gambler» (production conductor G. Rozhdestvensky).
He has worked with conductors Evgeny Svetlanov and Alexander Lazarev, and with directors Boris Pokrovsky, Robert Sturua, Eimuntas Nekrošius, among others.
He has toured in the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Germany, Luxembourg, and other countries.
Alongside his work at the Bolshoi Theatre he began teaching solo singing at the Gnesin Music College.
In 1998 he was invited to teach at GITIS (Russian Institute of Theatre Arts), where he served as Deputy Head of the Solo Singing Department.
Since 2002 he has been an Associate Professor in the Vocal Department of the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music.
Among his students are laureates of international and all‑Russian competitions, including P. Kondratenkov (soloist of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma), S. Lashmanov, S. Balashov (soloist of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich‑Danchenko Music Theatre), I. Zhuravlev (soloist of the Voronezh State Opera and Ballet Theatre), K. Shushakov (soloist of the Bolshoi Theatre), A. Shapovalov (soloist of the Astrakhan State Opera and Ballet Theatre), Ruslan Yudin (soloist of the Natalya Sats Children’s Musical Theatre); as well as soloists of the Bolshoi Theatre Chorus Alexey Chernykh, Viktor Bogatyrев, Ruslan Karachurin, and many others.
At the International Duet Competition in Kyiv (2002) Anastasia Verbitskaya and Olga Puchkova, his students, won First Prize.
Yu. S. Udalov is the author of a textbook on solo singing for theatre and music universities (2003), as well as articles including «The Voice Is Not an End in Itself, but a Means of Expression» (2017), among others.
In 2002 he became Head of the Bolshoi Theatre Chorus. Since 2011 he has served as Head of the Opera Company’s Artistic Ensembles. In 2017 he left the Bolshoi Theatre and continued his work at the Gnesin Russian Academy of Music, combining this with teaching in the Solo Singing Department at the Popov Academy of Choral Arts.
In 1979 he was awarded the badge «Excellence in Cultural Patronage of the Armed Forces of Russia» (Afghanistan).
In 2007 he received the honorary title «Honoured Worker of Culture of Russia».
