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 in the 2007 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. This was followed quickly 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 the role, from Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and has sung it with the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House – Covent Garden, Teatro alla Scala (available on DVD), Wiener Staatsoper, Bayerische Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, San Francisco Opera, Bolshoi Theater, Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Hamburg Staatsoper, and the Lucerne Festival, among others.

The Russian coloratura soprano is a graduate of the Houston Grand Opera Studio and has since appeared at Houston Grand Opera, Bolshoi Theatre, Metropolitan Opera, Hamburg State Opera, Vienna State Opera, Teatro alla Scala Milan, Deutsche Oper Berlin and Chicago Lyric Opera.

She has worked with conductors such as Ivor Bolton, James Conlon, Nicola Luisotti, Zubin Mehta, Patrick Summers, Vladimir Jurowski, Daniel Harding, Robin Ticciati, Edward Gardner, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and Riccardo Muti.

Ms. Shagimuratova’s 2016-17 begins with a festival and 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 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 finds the coloratura soprano performing a quartet of Mozart operas that includes 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).