Julia Lezhneva
The soprano Julia Lezhneva came to international attention at the age of 17, when she won the first International Elena Obraztsova Competition for young singers. In 2007 she opened the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro alongside Juan Diego Flórez, and in 2010 she performed an aria from Rossini’s La donna del lago at the Classical BRIT Awards.
Julia Lezhneva regularly performs with renowned orchestras such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Mariinsky Orchestra, the Russian National Orchestra, the Orquesta Nacional de España, the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and works with leading conductors including Adam Fischer, Giovanni Antonini, Herbert Blomstedt, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Paavo Järvi, Vladimir Jurowski and Andrea Marcon.
In 2018 she made her debut at Hamburg State Opera as Morgana (Alcina) and has since appeared there as Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia) and in 2021 as Poppea in a new production of Handel’s Agrippina directed by Barrie Kosky. In the 2019/20 season she made her debuts with the Berlin Philharmonic and at Vienna’s Musikverein, and returned to the Salzburg Mozartwoche.
Engagements in 2021/22 have taken her to the Handel Festspiele in Göttingen, to the Vienna Musikverein for her debut with Concentus Musicus Wien and to the Munich Philharmonic.
Her opera roles also include Vivaldi’s Angelica (Orlando furioso), Porpora’s Ersinda (Germanico in Germania) and Gildippe (Carlo il Calvo) and Mozart’s Susanna and Barbarina (Le nozze di Figaro). At the 2019 Salzburg Whitsun Festival she appeared as Galatea in Porpora’s Polifemo under George Petrou, in June 2021 she sang Ermione in Handel’s Oreste in Moscow and Paris, and following her previous success at the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival in Carlo il Calvo she returned there in September 2020 for Porpora’s Polifemo. In the 2023 Mozartwoche she will appear in a concert performance of Don Giovanni, singing Zerlina.
Julia Lezhneva is an exclusive artist with Decca Records. In April 2017 she made a critically-acclaimed solo album with Concerto Köln featuring arias by Carl Heinrich Graun, which was awarded the OPUS Klassik 2018. Her discography also includes the album Vivaldi – Gloria with Franco Fagioli and Diego Fasolis (2018), Germanico in Germania with Max Emanuel Cencic (2018), Handel arias with Il Giardino Armonico (2015), her highly praised debut album Alleluia, also with Il Giardino Armonico (2014) and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with Philippe Jaroussky, Diego Fasolis and I Barocchisti (2013).