Irina Vasilyeva is a Russian opera singer and a soloist with the Mariinsky Theatre. Born in 1970 in Dushanbe, she completed a ten-year school program there in 1988, specializing in piano. She entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory that year and graduated with distinction in 1993, having studied composition with Sergei Slonimsky. In 1994 she returned to the conservatory to study singing with Valentina Maksimova and completed her vocal studies in 1999 with Yelena Perlasova-Verkovich. She then joined the Mariinsky Theatre’s Academy of Young Singers and became an opera soloist with the theatre in 2005.
Vasilyeva received a diploma at the First International Elena Obraztsova Competition in Saint Petersburg in 1999 and won a competition in Verona for performances of roles in The Queen of Spades that year. In 2000, she received a special diploma and a prize for the best performance of a work by a 20th-century composer at the Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov International Competition for Young Opera Singers. She won first prize at the Isabella Yurieva International Russian Romance Competition in Tallinn in 2004.
Her Mariinsky and concert roles include Wellgunde in Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Parasha in Stravinsky’s Mavra, Musetta in Puccini’s La bohème, Corinna in Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims, the Governess in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, Alice Ford in Verdi’s Falstaff, Jenůfa in Janáček’s Jenůfa, Chrysothemis in Strauss’s Elektra, and Yaroslavna in Borodin’s Prince Igor. She has also sung soprano parts in works including Verdi’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Handel’s Messiah, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, and Mozart’s Requiem. In 2006, her performance as the Governess in The Turn of the Screw was nominated for a Golden Mask Award for Best Female Role in Opera.
Vasilyeva performs in Russia and abroad, and has toured the United States, Finland, Japan, Germany, and England. In 2000, she performed Act II of Wagner’s Parsifal with Plácido Domingo at a concert in Los Angeles; in 2006, she gave a solo program at Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. Her chamber repertoire includes early Italian arias, Bach cantata arias, Strauss’s Four Last Songs, vocal works by Wolf, Schumann, Schubert, Berg, and Grieg, songs by Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, Russian romances from the 19th and 20th centuries, and contemporary vocal music. She has also directed a production of Giovanni Ristori’s opera Ariadne. Since 2016, she has worked with young singers and has served as a jury member for vocal competitions, including the Academy and Tsarskoye Selo competitions.