Elena Popovskaya

Biography

Elena Popovskaya graduated with distinction from the Moscow State Conservatoire (classes of Margarita Landa and Klara Kadinskaya).
She has performed the following parts:

Gorislava (Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila)
Kupava (Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden)
Dido (Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas)
Elisabeth (Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda)
Gertrude (Thomas’s Hamlet)
Abigaille (Nabucco)
Santuzza (Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana)
Yaroslavna (Borodin’s Prince Igor)
Ortrud (Lohengrin)
Isolde (Tristan und Isolde)

Also in repertoire:
Elektra (Elektra)
Tosca (Tosca)
Turandot (Turandot)
Giorgetta (Il Tabarro)
Cio-Cio-san (Madama Butterfly)
Maria (Mazeppa)
Liza (The Queen of Spades)
Renata (The Fiery Angel)
Amelia (Un Ballo in Maschera)
Manon (Manon Lescaut)
soprano part in Shostakovich’s 14^th Symphony

Since 2007, Elena Popovskaya has been a guest soloist with the Bolshoi Theatre, where she performed the role of Liza (The Queen of Spades) in a new production of the opera. In 2012 she sang the role of Turandot. In 2013 she took part in the production of Prince Igor, singing the part of Yaroslavna (conductor Vassily Sinaisky, director Yuri Lyubimov). In 2014 she sang Renata (The Fiery Angel), in 2017 starred in the title part (Katerina Izmailova), and in 2019 appeared as The Foriegn Princess in Dvořák’s Rusalka new production (director Timofei Kulyabin, conductor Ainārs Rubiķis).

From 2010 she is a guest soloist of Mariinsky theatre, where she performed the roles of Liza (The Queen of Spades), Turandot (Turandot) and Amelia (Un Ballo in Maschera).

Tours

In 2007 she performed the role of Renata (The Fiery Angel) at La Monnaie (Brussels), as well as the roles of Liza (The Queen of Spades) and Turandot (Turandot) at the Latvian National Opera (Riga).

In 2008 she became the first Russian singer to perform the role of Turandot at the Giacomo Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago and received delighted reviews from the critics of leading magazines in Europe (Opéra in France and Amadeus in Italy). In the 2009-2010 season she was invited back to the festival and toured throughout Italy with the festival’s production.

In 2010 she performed the title role in Strauss opera Elektra in a production of the Teatro Comunale di Bolzano together with the Joseph Haydn Orchestra and the Arturo Toscanini Orchestra under the baton of Gustav Kuhn; she made her debut as Manon (Manon Lescaut) at the Teatro Comunale Luciano Pavarotti in Modena (Italy) and she performed the role of Turandot (Turandot, directed by Franco Zeffirelli) at the Arena di Verona Festival.
In 2012 she made her debut at the Rome Opera as Cio-Cio-san (Madama Butterfly). In 2013 she sang Cio-Cio-san in Teatro delle Muse di Ancona, Senta (Der fliegende Holländer) in Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Turandot in Rome Opera.

In 2014 she performed the title role in La Gioconda at the Opéra de Marseille.

In the 2015/16 season she sang the role of Renata (The Fiery Angel) at the Teatro Colón (Buenos Aires) and the title role in La Gioconda at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (Beijing).

Among recent enganements: Senta in Der fliegende Holländer (Gran Teatre del Liceu/ Barcelona, conductor Oxana Lyniv, director Philipp Stölzl, 2017) and the title part in Tristan und Isolde (III International Mariinsky Far East Festival/ Vladivostok, conductor Valery Gergiev, 2018), Renata in The Fiery Angel (Rome Opera, conductor Alejo Pérez, director Emma Dante, 2019), title roles in Tristan und Isolde and Elektra (Mariinsky Theatre, 2019).

She has worked with such conductors as Pinchas Steinberg, Gustav Kuhn, Kazushi Ono, Alberto Veronesi, Vladimir Fedoseev, Mikhail Pletnev, Andris Nelsons, Antonio Pirolli, Jan Latham-Koenig, Giuliano Carella, Daniel Oren, Ira Levin, Gintaras Rinkevičius and stage directors including Richard Jones, Franco Zeffirelli, Valery Fokin, Kasper Holten, Francesco Maestrini, Pier Luigi Pizzi and Maurizio Scaparro.