Natalia Iretskaya
Natalia Iretskaya was a Russian soprano singer and music teacher. A lyric coloratura soprano, she was born on 14 August 1843 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire.
She graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1868, where she studied with Henriette Nissen-Saloman. She subsequently continued her training in Paris under Pauline Viardot and performed in France and Germany.
In 1874 Iretskaya returned to Russia. Alongside her concert activity, she immediately began teaching, and in 1881 she became a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.
Her pupils included her niece, or, according to some claims, daughter, Natalia Aktséri; as well as Lyubov Andreyeva-Delmas, Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel, Ksenia Dorliak, Elena Katulskaya, Lydia Lipkowska, Zoya Lodiy, Yevgeniya Luchezarskaya, Sofia Gladkaya, A. G. Zherebtsova-Andreyeva, V. M. Zarudnaya, and D. M. Musina-Pushkina, among other notable singers.
Iretskaya died in Petrograd on 14 November 1922 after a serious illness. She was buried at the Nikolskoye Cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.