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Olga Borodina

About this Artist

Mezzo-soprano OLGA BORODINA is a star of the Kirov Opera, performing with the company in St. Petersburg and throughout the world with artistic director Valery Gergiev, who was the first to recognize the Russian mezzo-soprano’s tremendous potential. She won the Rosa Ponselle and Barcelona competitions, which further launched her international career.

In 1992 she made her highly acclaimed London debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, sharing the stage with Plácido Domingo in Samson et Dalilah. She was immediately reinvited for La Cenerentola and as Marguérite in La damnation de Faust with Sir Colin Davis. Borodina made her Salzburg Festival debut in Boris Godunov in 1997 and returned in 1999 as Eboli in Don Carlos. Earlier this year Olga Borodina sang the Principessa in Adriana Lecouvreur at La Scala and Carmen at the Bastille in Paris. Borodina’s future European engagements include Eboli in Paris and Dalilah at La Scala.

In 1995 she made her American debut in San Francisco in La Cenerentola, returning to San Francisco for her first Carmen in 1996. Olga Borodina made her long-awaited Metropolitan Opera debut in Boris Godunov in 1997 and returned to the Metropolitan Opera for the opening night of the 1998/99 season in Samson et Dalilah with Plácido Domingo and James Levine. Subsequent engagements at the Metropolitan Opera have included Pique Dame and Aida. She appears in Carnegie Hall with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and James Levine singing Ravel’s Shéhérazade, Berlioz’ cantata La mort de Cléopâtre, and the Verdi Requiem.

In recital, Olga Borodina has appeared in London (Wigmore Hall and Barbican Centre), Milan (La Scala), Vienna (Konzerthaus), San Francisco (Davies Hall), New York (Alice Tully Hall), Rome (Accademia di Santa Cecilia), Geneva (Grand Théâtre), Hamburg (Staatsoper), Paris (Théâtre des Champs-Élysées), Barcelona (Liceu), Madrid (National Concert Hall), and at the St Denis, Edinburgh, and Ludwigsburg Festivals. Future recital engagements take her to Lisbon (Gulbenkian Foundation), Paris (Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Châtelet) and Vienna (Musikverein).

Olga Borodina’s releases on the Philips Classics label include: Khovanshchina, Pique Dame, Prince Igor, Boris Godunov, Eugene Onegin, La forza del destino, Don Carlos, Rachmaninoff’s Vespers and Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette, working with Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, and Sir Colin Davis. On the Erato label she recorded Samson et Dalilah opposite José Cura with Sir Colin Davis. Her solo recital recordings, all for the Philips Classics label, are Tchaikovsky Songs which was voted Best Début Recording 1994 by the jury of the Cannes Classical Music Awards, Songs of Desire, Bolero, and an album of opera arias with the Welsh National Opera Orchestra and Carlo Rizzi.