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Lena Belkina

Lena Belkina, mezzo-soprano (photos and videos  here)

Crimean-born, Belkina started her music education very early on. At the age of 20 she was engaged by the Leipzig Opera for 3 years and had already sang at the Deutsche Oper in Düsseldorf, the Palau de les Arts in Valencia, the Händel-Festival in Halle and had studied the part of Orfeo from Orfeo et Euridice (Gluck) with Riccardo Muti at the Salzburger Festspiele.

At the age of 24 she was selected by RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana) and Rada Film Roma out of a pool of many international candidates to sing the lead part in Mondovision’s live production of La Cenerentola (Rossini), a production led by the Oscar winning director Carlo Verdone. This successful production won several international prizes, such as the 64th PRIX ITALIA and the Audience Choice Award at the Warsaw Music Gardens Festival, and was broadcast in over 150 countries and shown in over a hundred cinemas. As a result, Belkina became a household name to millions of TV and cinema spectators worldwide.

Belkina performed alongside some of today’s leading conductors, including Paolo Carignani, Jiří Bělohlávek, Tomáš Netopil and Marco Armiliato.

She sings regularly in opera productions at central opera houses such as the Vienna State Opera, the Teatro Real Madrid, the Teatro Comunale Bologna, the Rossini Opera Festival Pesaro, the Mikhailosvky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the New National Theatre in Tokyo and the National Theater in Prague.

Belkina also gave concert appearances at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the Beethovenhalle in Bonn, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Trans-Siberian Art Festival in Novosibirsk, the Kunstfest in Dresden and with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo and many more.

Current engagements include the roles of Dorabella in Così Fan Tutte (Mozart) in the Munich Cuvilliés Theatre, Olga in Yevgeni Onegin (Tchaikovsky) at the Malmö Opera and as Angelina in La Cenerentola (Rossini) in the Prague Estates Theatre.

In 2014 she sang the role of Arsace in a production of Aureliano in Palmira (Rossini) at the Rossini Opera Festival, directed by Mario Martone. As part of this role she sang the cadenzas of the legendary castrato Giovanni Battista Velluti’s, an honour that no one else has been granted since the great castrato’s death. The success of this opera prompted an invitation to return to the festival in 2015 to sing the role of Pippo in La Gazza Ladra (Rossini).

Both of her recently released album – Dolci Momenti / Belcanto Arias, released on Sony Classical, and a DVD of Aureliano in Palmira (Rossini), which was released on Arthaus Musik – received outstanding international reviews.

For several years the global music press has acknowledged Belkina’s talent and has been praising her in her various roles:

“Rossini would have been thrilled by Lena.“ (La Stampa)

“fulminant, brilliant, beautiful voice” (Das Opernglas),

“a touching mezzo” (Süddeutsche Zeitung),

“…a treat for the ears and the eyes…” (WAZ).

The Oscar-winning director Carlo Verdone said about working with Belkina: “…una fotogenia straordinaria, e la giusta dolcezza malinconica e sognante nei suoi grandi occhi neri…” (“extraordinarily photogenic, with the ideal melancholy and the dreamy sweetness of her big dark eyes”)