The Russian soprano Natalia Smirnova graduated from the choral conducting department of Moscow’s Gnessin State College of Music in 2016, and is currently studying singing with Larisa Rudakova in the vocal department of the Moscow State Conservatory. She has been a member of renowned vocal ensembles such as Intrada, Questa Musica and Praktika.
Natalia Smirnova participated in the first Russian performance of Cherubini’s La prisonnière and in the world premiere of Anna Pospelova’s opera De-ba-rr-ka-de-rr (2020). In 2024 she sang the principal female role in Pascal Dusapin’s opera Passion in the first Russian performance of the work under Teodor Currentzis at the Diaghilev Festival in Perm.
Since autumn 2024 Natalia Smirnova has been participating in the training programme for young opera artists at the Helikon Opera in Moscow, where she has appeared as Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) and in Bach’s Coffee Cantata. In October 2024 she sang Brigitta in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta at the Opera Studio of the Moscow Conservatory. In January 2025 she made her debut at the Paris Opéra as Vénus and a Blessed Spirit in Peter Sellars’s new production of Castor et Pollux under Teodor Currentzis. Under Currentzis’s direction she has also sung Doña Isabel in Peter Sellars’s version of Purcell’s The Indian Queen in Paris, Berlin and Antwerp.
Her opera repertory also includes the Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte), Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Olympia (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) and the title role of Stravinsky’s The Nightingale.
