Olga Borodina

Olga Borodina graduated from the Leningrad State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire in 1989. She studied under the supervision of Valentina Gagen, and at the conservatoire she was a student of Irina Bogacheva. In 1987, she won the National Glinka Competition and was invited to join the Kirov Opera. At the Kirov Theatre, Olga Borodina made her debut as Siébel in Gounod’s Faust (1988). However, the singer is most famous for her iconic interpretation of Marfa in Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina. She was a young opera soloist when she performed this role for the first time at the Kirov Theatre. In that role, she later appeared on Mariinsky Opera tours (the Edinburgh and Salzburg Festivals and Covent Garden) as well as in productions by other theatres including the Hamburg Opera and Metropolitan Opera. The singer’s repertoire also includes Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Salammbô. In 1991, she sang in the premiere of a production of Salammbô revised by Vyacheslav Nagovitsin in Mérida (Spain), and the same year she received her first engagement at the Paris Opera, making her debut as Marina Mniszech. Borodina has given several performances of Mussorgsky’s cycle Songs and Dances of Death.

TV broadcasts of the operas Khovanshchina, Boris Godunov (production by Andrei Tarkovsky), and Prokofiev’s War and Peace (production by Graham Vick, 1991) from the Kirov Theatre as well as audio recordings produced by Philips provided a powerful impetus to the singer’s career. From the early 1990s, Olga Borodina has appeared at the most prestigious opera and concert venues of Europe and USA: in 1992, she made her debut at Covent Garden, appearing as Dalila in Samson et Dalila by Saint-Saëns, in 1993, she made a concert debut at La Scala, in 1995, she appeared at the San Francisco Opera (Rossini’s La Cenerentola), in 1997, she sang at the Metropolitan Opera and at the Salzburg Festival (Boris Godunov), in 2013, she made her debut at the Vienna State Opera (Aida). Her rare type of voice, a coloratura mezzo-soprano, has been praised in productions of operas including Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera) and L’italiana in Algeri (Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera). Working outside Russia, the singer perfected her performing technique, studying under some of the most outstanding vocalists. Her repertoire expanded to include roles in Bizet’s Carmen, Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur and Ponchielli’s La Gioconda. Olga Borodina also appears in concert programmes. Her stage partners over the years have included Semyon Skigin, Larisa Gergieva, James Levine, Dmitry Yefimov, and Vasily Popov.

In 2013, the singer appeared in a jubilee concert at the Kremiln Palace in Moscow. In 2015, Olga Borodina featured on the jury of the XV International Tchaikovsky Competition.