A voice for Wagner​​​​​​                    Mariinsky 2013 - 2022

At the age of 5 I began learning to play the violin.
Later this served me as an excellent basis for singing, so that with my „natural voice“ and also some vocal lessons, I received a few concerts, semi-staged performances and tour engagements.
From my current perspective however, all of this was on a „backyard theater level“.
Therefore I was even more surprised, when I was invited by a conductor from the Mariinsky Theater (he had heard me in one of these performances), to audition for the Academy of Young Opera Singers at the Mariinsky Theater.
Ready to seize every opportunity, I auditioned and was nevertheless astonished, that I was actually accepted.

At the Academy I should be trained specifically for the German repertoire and for Wagner roles.

After only 4 months of studying there, I suddenly recieved a chance to sing an audition for Maestro Valery Gergiev, who immediately took me from the academy directly to the theater, where I became an aspirant for the Wagner repertoire.
After Maestro Gergievs wish, I had to study several main roles from the wagner repertoire.

This was a demanding task for myself and I realized that in order to perfect my skills I had to change the essentials - vocal technique, endurance and discipline, but also my repertoire.

Every day was now filled with new experiences and opened up new possibilities. I received several musical rehearsals daily, sometimes 4-5 hours a day. I dare say I, experienced the content of a university course directly in practice.

Of course, working on myself and my technique was not easy in an foreign country, whose language I didn't know.
And yet it was an indescribable gift being in such a big house and being able to move around and getting information without restrictions, so as watching all the performances and all the rehearsal processes and pass through them myself.

Along with my colleagues from the theater, I managed to give a few orchestra concerts with wagnerian program. I also participated in several open air programs of the city of St. Petersburg. Includingly a program dedicated to Dimitry Shostakovich at his 110th birthday, where I sang excerps from his „Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk“ at the "Square of the Arts of St. Petersburg" with orchestra and also I debuted in the role of Agathe from Weber's „Freischütz“ in front of almost 6,000 spectators in the frame of the Open Air Festival „Opera for all“.

I was fully rehearsed in staging with orchestra for the main Wagner roles and became the cover for this roles.

As far as my colleagues from Mariinsky know, I was the only foreigner (without Russian roots) in the history of the Mariinsky Theater, who was so specifically and permanently prepared as a singer immediately in the house.

During my stays in Munich I also studied intensively with Richard Trimborn, internationally known as the Wagner specialist par excellence, in collaboration with conductors such as Hans Knappertsbusch, Karl Böhm, Wolfgang Sawallisch and Carlos Kleiber. As a consultant, he was also involved in several productions of the Mariinsky Theater as well.

After some years of intensely training, I was finally appointed being the first cast, but the corona pandemic and then the escalation of the political situation hit our plans...