Zarina Abaeva

Russian soprano Zarina Abaeva, who was born in 1986, comes from Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia, where she initially studied with Nelly Khestanova before completing her training with Rusanna Lisitsian at the Moscow Gnessin Institute in 2011. Winner of the All-Russian Nadezhda Obukhova Young Vocalists’ Competition and the Minsk International Christmas Singing Competition, she has been a member of the Perm Opera ensemble since 2012. Abaeva has had great success there as a Tchaikovsky performer in particular, for example, as Iolanta, Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, Maria in Mazeppa, and Agnès Sorel in The Maid of Orléans. Her repertoire also includes Micaëla in Bizet’s Carmen, Antonia in Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Blanche in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, and the title roles in Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Madama Butterfly as well as in Verdi’s Aida. In the autumn of 2017, she appeared as Mimì in Puccini’s La Bohème at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.

February 2019