Albina Shagimuratova has been hailed by Opera News as “a phenomenon that must be heard to be believed” and by the New York Times for her “riveting Lucia.” She first came to international attention as the Gold Medal winner at the 2007 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. This was quickly followed by her European opera debut as the Queen of the Night at the Salzburg Festival under the baton of Riccardo Muti. She has come to be regarded as the world’s leading interpreter of this role in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and has sung it at the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden), the Teatro alla Scala (available on DVD), the Wiener Staatsoper, the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, San Francisco Opera, the Bolshoi Theatre, the Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Hamburg Staatsoper and the Lucerne Festival among others.
Albina Shagimuratova’s 2016-17 season begins with a festival and a role debut at the BBC Proms as the title character in Rossini’s Semiramide conducted by Sir Mark Elder at the Royal Albert Hall. The performance will be broadcast and recorded by the Opera Rara label for release in 2017. She then returns to the Lyric Opera of Chicago for performances of her signature role as the title character in Graham Vick’s production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor under Enrique Mazzola. The remainder of the 2016-17 season will see the coloratura soprano performing four Mozart operas including Die Zauberflöte (Opéra Bastille, Wiener Staatsoper), Don Giovanni (Wiener Staatsoper), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Houston Grand Opera) and Mitridate, re di Ponto (Royal Opera House). Last summer, she portrayed the legendary soprano Adelina Patti in a new film version of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, due to be released in 2017.
Recent stage successes include Don Giovanni (Glyndebourne Festival) and La traviata (Houston Grand Opera). Other triumphs include Lucia di Lammermoor (Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Los Angeles Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bolshoi Theatre, Houston Grand Opera) and Rigoletto (Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera).
She has collaborated with Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Hans Graf, Zubin Mehta, Valery Gergiev, James Conlon, Sir Andrew Davis, Adam Fischer, Patrick Summers, Peter Schneider, Nicola Luisotti, Laurent Campellone, Maurizio Benini, Giorgio Morandi, Alain Altinoglu and Robin Ticciati. Albina Shagimuratova has also performed with the Houston Symphony, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Danish National Symphony.
Albina Shagimuratova also performed at the G20 Summit at the Constantine Palace in St Petersburg, at the opening of the Summer Universiade in Kazan (Russia), with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in their annual Millennium Park summer concert series, at the Edinburgh International Festival in Britten’s War Requiem and at the BBC Proms in Rachmaninoff’s The Bells conducted by Edward Gardner at London’s Royal Albert Hall. She reopened the Bolshoi Theatre with a new production of Ruslan and Lyudmila by visionary stage director Dmitry Chernyakov which was conducted by Vladimir Jurowski (available on DVD); at that theatre she has also appeared in recital.
Albina Shagimuratova won the XXIII Russian national Golden Mask theatre award in the category “Best Opera Actress” for her portrayal of the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor, and she has also won prizes at the Francisco Viñas International Singing Competition in Spain and the International Glinka Young Opera Singers’ Competition in Chelyabinsk (2005).
Albina Shagimuratova was born in Tashkent (USSR). She began her musical studies as a pianist and attended the Aukhadeyev Music College in Kazan and later the Kazan State University, where she received a degree in vocal and opera performance. She went on to study at the Moscow Conservatoire. Graduating with honours, she completed her doctoral work there in 2007. She is also a proud alumnus of the Houston Grand Opera Studio.
In 2017, Albina Shagimuratova was awarded the title of the Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation.
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