Margarita Sukhankina is a Soviet and Russian opera and pop singer, a mezzo-soprano, and a former soloist of the pop group Mirage. She was born on April 10, 1964, in Moscow, in a family of engineers.
In 1971 she entered a local music school to study piano. From 1976 to 1984, Sukhankina was a soloist of the Great Children's Choir of All-Union Radio and Central Television under the direction of Viktor Popov. In 1979 she entered a music-pedagogical college, graduating in 1983 with a diploma as a music teacher and music educator. Beginning in 1983, she was unable to gain admission to the conservatory for two consecutive years and became a student at the Gnesins State Pedagogical Institute. She later left the institute because she disagreed with a teacher's demand that she change from mezzo-soprano to soprano. In 1986 she was finally admitted to the Moscow Conservatory, where she studied solo singing under Nina Dorliak until 1991.
In 1985 Sukhankina collaborated with Andrei Lityagin on recordings for the group Activity Zone. In 1986 she recorded three songs for the first magnetic album of Mirage: "Video," "The Stars Are Waiting for Us," and "This Night." In 1988 she recorded the album Together Again in full; songs and vocals from that album were used while Tatyana Ovsienko and Irina Saltykova toured. In 1989 she recorded the third album Not for the First Time, which was never released. Demo versions of that album were used in performances by Ekaterina Boldysheva, with her own voice, and by Tatyana Ovsienko.
After Mirage, she began a career as an opera soloist at the Bolshoi Theatre. She left the Bolshoi Theatre in 2002. She also recorded the Chuvash Album. In 2004 Natalia Gulkina предложила ей записать a joint song, which led to the single Love Mirage and the album Just a Mirage. By 2007, by court decision, the Gulkina-Sukhankina duo received the name "The Group of Composer Andrei Lityagin 'Mirage'." In 2008 the group released two music videos, for "1000 Stars" and "The Night Shimmers." On September 17, 2009, the Mirage album 1000 Stars was released. In 2013, as part of Mirage, she released the album Let Me Go. In September 2016 Sukhankina organized her own ensemble, whose repertoire included Mirage songs.
She later appeared as a judge on the international children's vocal competition You're Super!, which began on NTV on February 11, 2017. On August 6, 2019, she presented her solo album Music Bound Us. In 2018 she received the Moscow Mayor's award "Wings of a Stork" for a special contribution to the development of family placement for orphans and children left without parental care in Moscow. In 2022 she took part in a gala concert marking the 50th anniversary of the Viktor Popov Great Children's Choir at the State Kremlin Palace, and also appeared in a concert dedicated to the memory and work of Yevgeny Krylatov.
On November 23, 2023, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, Sukhankina was awarded the honorary title Honored Artist of the Russian Federation. On February 20, 2024, the Minister of Culture of the Russian Federation, Olga Lyubimova, presented her with the honorary certificate and badge for that title. In 2026 she took part in the seventh season of the NTV show The Mask in the role of the Fox and remained in the competition until the seventh episode.
Sukhankina's later career was also marked by disputes over the use of Mirage songs. In 2017 lyricist Valery Sokolov stated that permission to perform a number of Mirage songs had been granted only to Margarita Sukhankina and her ensemble, as well as to singer Svetlana Razina. For many years producer and Mirage founder Andrei Lityagin conducted legal proceedings against Sukhankina over copyright to the group's songs. Court decisions in 2020 and 2021 concerned compensation for unlawful use of works from the Mirage repertoire, while in December 2023 a court found her performance of the song "Music Bound Us" in a television program unlawful; that decision was overturned on appeal on August 22, 2024.
Her stage and operatic repertoire included roles such as Olga in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Laura in Dargomyzhsky's The Stone Guest, Cherubino in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Flora in Verdi's La Traviata, and Smeraldina and Ninetta in Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges. In 2013 she adopted two children, a daughter, Valeria, and a son, Sergei. In early 2021 she also spoke openly about undergoing bariatric surgery and losing 30 kilograms over the course of a year.
Connections
This figure has 1 connection in the Music Lineage catalog.