The Armenian soprano Kristina Mkhitaryan is a graduate of the Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre in Moscow. She continued her studies at the Gnessin College of Music and the Gnessin Academy of Music, going on to join the Young Artists Opera Programme at the Bolshoi Theatre. Since then, she has made a name for herself as one of the leading lyric sopranos of her generation.
She has won prizes in several international singing competitions, including first prize at the Queen Sonja Competition in Oslo (2013) and at the Viotti Competition in Vercelli (2014), third prize at the Neue Stimmen competition (2013) and second prize at the Operalia competition (2017).
Career highlights have included Violetta (La traviata) at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Palm Beach Opera, the Royal Opera House Muscat and in a production of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma at the Terme di Caracalla, Gilda (Rigoletto) at Opera Australia in Sydney, the Hamburg State Opera and the Paris Opéra, and Armida (Rinaldo) under Maxim Emelyanychev at the Glyndebourne Festival.
In recent seasons she has made acclaimed role debuts as Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, as Tatyana (Eugene Onegin) at the Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and as Mimì (La bohème) at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Other recent engagements have included Violetta, the title role in Manon, Liù (Turandot) and Leïla (Les Pêcheurs de perles) at the Vienna State Opera, Tatyana at Covent Garden and Micaëla (Carmen) at the Metropolitan Opera and the Arena di Verona. She has also performed at the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia.
Following her Salzburg Festival debut as Micaëla, Kristina Mkhitaryan’s engagements in the 2026/27 season will include a return to the Met as Mimì and her debut at the New National Theatre in Tokyo as Tatyana.
In concert her appearances have included Rachmaninoff’s The Bells with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Górecki’s Symphony No. 3, Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate, Vivaldi’s Gloria, and Handel’s Il delirio amoroso with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Leonardo García Alarcón. She has also sung the title role in Rachmaninoff’s Francesca da Rimini and Semfira in Rachmaninoff’s Aleko with the Munich Radio Orchestra, and the title role in Donizetti’s Maria Padilla at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville. She has performed a programme of Russian romances at London’s Wigmore Hall, and regularly gives recitals featuring Russian, French and Italian repertory.
