Albina Shagimuratova

Biography

Born in Tashkent and started music lessons at the age of five. In 1994 she enrolled at Kazan Music College specializing in choral conducting. From 1998-2001 she studied at the Kazan N.G. Zhiganov State Conservatoire in the choral conducting and opera singing departments.
In 2001 she enrolled at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky State Conservatoire (Galina Pisarenko’s class), and then completed her post-graduate studies there (2007).

In 2004, Ms. Shagimuratova became a member of the K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theater. She has sung the Swan in The Tale of Tsar Sultan and the Queen of Shemakha in The Golden Cockerel of Rimsky-Korsakov. Since 2008 she has been a soloist with Tatar State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre.

From 2006-2008 she perfected her skills at the Youth Opera Studio attached to the Houston Grand Opera, where she sang the roles of Musetta (La Boheme), Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), Gilda (Rigoletto) and Violetta (La Traviata).

Her European debut was at the Salzburg Festival where she sang The Queen of the Night in Mozart’s opera Die Zauberflöte in 2008 (conductor Riccardo Muti). In the 2008/09 season she also sang the Queen of the Night at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Los Angeles Opera. She made her role and company debut as Gilda in Rigoletto at Palm Beach Opera.

Highlights of the 2009/10 season included her Metropolitan Opera debut as the Queen of the Night in Julie Taymor’s production of Die Zauberflöte — a role she also performed at Deutsche Oper am Rhein. She made her Boston Symphony debut under the baton of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos in Rossini’s Stabat Mater, and made her New York debut as Flaminia in Haydn’s rarely-performed Il Mondo della Luna with Gotham Chamber Opera, in a new production by Diane Paulus at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium.

During the 2010/2011 season, Albina Shagimuratova debuted at La Scala as the Queen of the Night in a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, directed and designed by William Kentridge and conducted by Roland Böer. She also sang the Queen of the Night for her debut at Staatsoper Hamburg in a production directed and designed by Achim Freyer, and at the Wiener Staatsoper under the baton of Ivor Bolton. Her concert calendar included Mozart’s Requiem with Zubin Mehta at Maggio Musicale in Florence.

In the 2011/12 season she sang the Queen of the Night at the Wiener Staatsoper and the Gran Teatro del Liceu and Lucia di Lammermoor at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Her extensive orchestral experience includes being a soloist in the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Rossini and Fauré. In 2005, she sang Mozart’s Requiem in the opening concert of the famed December Nights of Sviatoslav Richter in Moscow. She has also sung the Beethoven Ninth Symphony and Mahler Eighth Symphony with the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra there under Vladimir Fedoseyev, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the National Symphony orchestra of Denmark under the baton of of Fubeca de Burgos, Britten’s “War Requiem” by, played at the festival in Edinburgh. Rachmaninov’s “Bells” with the London Symphony orchestra under the baton of Edward Gardner.
She has appeared with the outstanding conductors Riccardo Muti, James Conlon, Patrick Summers, Peter Schneider, Adam Fischer, Robin Ticciati, Andrew Davies, Alain Altinoglu, Laurent Campellone, Maurizio Benini, Giorgio Morandi, Asher Fish, Vladimir Spivakov and others.

In 2010 she made her Bolshoi Theatre debut in the part of Queen of the Night. In 2011 she took part in the production of Ruslan and Lyudmila, singing the part of Lyudmila (conductor Vladimir Jurowski, director Dmitri Tcherniakov). In 2012 she sang the role of Violetta in a new production of La Traviata (conductor Laurent Campellone, director Francesca Zambello), and Contessa di Folleville in Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims in 2018 (conductor Tugan Sokhiev, director Damiano Michieletto).

In season 2015/16 she performed the part of Violetta (La Traviata) in Tokyo, Konstanze (Die Entführung aus dem Serail) at the Metropolitan Opera, the Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte) at San Francisco Opera, Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) at Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, title part in Semiramide at the Royal Albert Hall (concert version).

She portrayed the legendary soprano Adelina Patti in a new film version of Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina, released in April 2017.

Other engagements for the current season include La Traviata at the Wiener Staatsoper, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Il Paria at the Barbican Center in London as well as Britten’s War Requiem at the Bruknerhaus Linz, the National Center for the Arts in Ottawa, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Gasteig Hall in Munich, the Musikverein Wien.

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).

Discography

2018 — Rossini’s Semiramide (title part; conductor Sir Mark Elder, Opera Rara, CD).
2019 — Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Queen of the Night; Chamber Orchestra of Europe under the button of maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Deutsche Grammophon, CD).
2021 — Donizetti’s Il Paria (Neala; conductor Sir Mark Elder, Opera Rara, CD).