Dazzling Russian coloratura soprano Albina Shagimuratova first came to international attention as the winner of the Gold Medal in the 2007 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. She is a recent graduate of the Houston Grand Opera Studio and made her European operatic debut as Mozart's Queen of the Night at the Salzburg Festival in August 2008 under the baton of Riccardo Muti. Ms. Shagimuratova is a graduate of the Houston Grand Opera Studio and has sung both the Queen of the Night and Musetta with the company to great acclaim. Other roles in Houston have included the Sandman and Dew Fairy in Hansel and Gretel in a production by celebrated puppeteer Basil Twist. Today’s reigning Queen of the Night, Albina Shagimuratova makes her San Francisco Opera debut in The Magic Flute during the 2011/2012 season. She also performs her signature role in concert at the Lucerne Festival under the baton of Daniel Harding, and in productions at the Wiener Staatsoper and the Gran Teatro del Liceu. At the Wiener Staatsoper this season, she also makes her role debut as Adina in Otto Schenk’s production of L’Elisir d’amore, sings Musetta in Franco Zeffirelli’s production of La Bohème, and appears in recital. She returns to the Bolshoi Opera in Ruslan and Ludmilla, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, and to Houston Grand Opera in La Traviata, conducted by Patrick Summers. During the 2010/2011 season, Albina Shagimuratova made her role debut as Lucia di Lammermoor at Houston Grand Opera, in a production by Tony Award-winner John Doyle, conducted by Antonino Fogliani. She debuted at La Scala as the Queen of the Night in a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, directed and designed by acclaimed visual artist 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. Highlights of recent seasons include her Metropolitan Opera debut as the Queen of the Night in Julie Taymor’s beloved production of Die Zauberflöte—a role she also performed at Deutsche Oper am Rhein and at the Bolshoi Opera. 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. Ms. Shagimuratova sang the Queen of the Night for her debut at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well for her debut at Los Angeles Opera in the beloved Peter Hall/Gerald Scarfe production. She made her role and company debut as Gilda in Rigoletto at Palm Beach Opera, which she reprised for her return to Houston Grand Opera. 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. 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. Albina Shagimuratova was born in Tashkent, USSR. She began her musical studies as a pianist and attended the Music College Auhadeez in Kazan and later Kazan State University where she received a degree in vocal and opera performance. Her later studies were at the Moscow Conservatory. Graduating with honors, she completed her doctoral work there in 2007. www.albinashagimuratova.com Russian soprano