Elena Vitman was born in the Far East. She graduated from the St Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire and an assistantship at the St Petersburg Conservatoire (class of Professor Irina Bogacheva).
Elena Vitman has been a soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre since 1996, making her debut as Lyubava (Sadko).
Roles she has performed at the Mariinsky Theatre include:
Naina (Ruslan and Lyudmila)
Xenia’s nurse, Hostess of the Inn (Boris Godunov)
Lyubov (Mazepa)
Polina, the Countess (The Queen of Spades)
Filippyevna (Eugene Onegin)
Martha (Iolanta)
Amelfa the Housekeeper (The Golden Cockerel)
Matchmaker-Crone Babarikha (The Tale of Tsar Saltan)
Solokha (Christmas Eve)
Bobylikha (The Snow Maiden)
Frosya (Semyon Kotko)
Marya Bolkonskaya, Akhrosimova, Vasilisa the Elder (War and Peace)
Elderly Lady, Podtochina (The Nose)
Lizaveta Prokofyevna Yepanchina (The Idiot)
The Grandmother (The Story of Kai and Gerda)
Preziosilla (La forza del destino)
The Princess (Suor Angelica)
Suzuki (Madama Butterfly)
Hécube (Les Troyens)
Grimgerde, Waltraute (Die Walküre)
Erda (Das Rheingold and Siegfried)
First Norn (Götterdämmerung)
Clytemnestra (Elektra)
Nurse (Die Frau ohne Schatten)
Mrs Grose (The Turn of the Screw)
Old Buryja (Jenůfa)
Geneviève (Pelléas et Mélisande)
Elena Vitman’s repertoire also includes the roles of the Princess (The Enchantress), Azucena (Il trovatore), Amneris (Aida), Eboli (Don Carlo), Ulrica (Un ballo in maschera) and the Princesse de Bouillon (Adrienne Lecouvreur), as well as the mezzo-soprano roles in Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky cantata, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Verdi’s Requiem.
Together with the Mariinsky Opera Company, Elena Vitman has toured to Great Britain (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Barbican Centre in London and the Cardiff Festival), Spain (Teatro Real, Madrid), Germany (Baden-Baden), Israel, Japan and the USA (the Kennedy Center in Washington).
The singer frequently performs programmes of chamber music in St Petersburg and in towns throughout Germany.
In 2009 Elena Vitman became the first singer in Russia to perform the role of the nurse in Strauss’ opera Die Frau ohne Schatten, and she also sang the role of Frosia in the premiere of a new production of Semyon Kotko at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1999.
In 2009 Elena Vitman was involved in a recording of the opera The Nose on the Mariinsky label, and this recording received a Grammy nomination. The singer’s discography also includes a recording of the opera Salome made by the Mariinsky Opera Company in Stockholm.
