The press has already taken her to their heart: “fulminant, brilliant, beautiful voice” (Das Opernglas), “a touching mezzo” (Süddeutsche Zeitung), “…a treat for the ears and the eyes…” (WAZ). The young mezzo-soprano Lena Belkina is already in demand all over the world.
She sang her way into the international limelight back in 2012 with her Angelina in Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Carlo Verdone/Gianluigi Gelmetti). The live video recording made by Mondovision was awarded the 64º PRIX ITALIA and the Warsaw Music Gardens Festival audience prize. What entranced the Oscar-winning director about his star performer was her extraordinary charisma: “…una fotogenia straordinaria, e la giusta dolcezza malinconica e sognante nei suoi grandi occhi neri…” (“extraordinarily photogenic, with the ideal melancholy and the dreamy sweetness of her big dark eyes”) (Verdone in Cultura). Since then, this film version produced by Andrea Andermann has been shown in more than 150 countries. Lena recorded her first solo album together with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, which will already be released this year by Sony Classical.
There are currently three new productions planned: At the moment, Lena sings the Dorabella part in Cosi Fan Tutte in the Munich Cuvilliés Theatre. Subsequently, the singer can be experienced as Olga in Eugen Onegin at the Malmö Opera and as Angelina in La Cenerentola in the Prague Estates Theatre.
Apart from that, opera lovers may look forward to listening to Lena in several solo evening recitals with orchestra in Germany and Israel.
In summer 2014, the Ukrainian singer was engaged by the Rossini Opera Festival. Lena Belkina delighted with the major role of Arsace in a newly revised edition of the opera Aureliano in Palmira. It was the first performance of the opera at the festival and was directed by Mario Martone. A special highlight was that Lena was allowed to sing Giovanni Battista Velluti’s great cadenzas: a particular honour that no one else has been granted since the great castrato’s death. The opera published by Unitel Classica. The great success was brought by the 2015 re-invitation, where Lena will sing the Pippo part in Gazza Ladra.
Other important appearances in recent seasons include the Cherubino part in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro in the Real Madrid Theatre in 2014, in the New National Theatre Tokyo in 2013 as well as in the Vienna State Opera in 2012.
When Lena sang the Olga part in Tschaikovsky’s Eugen Onegin, she went to the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in 2014, to the Palau de les Arts Valencia in 2011 and previously to the Leipzig Opera. Here, the singer was ensemble member from 2009 to 2012. She has already been engaged as Rosina in the new production of Il babiere di Siviglia in the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.
Special attention was paid to Lena in the Mikhaylovsky Theatre in St Petersburg, where she sang, under the direction of Mikhail Tatarnikov, the Polina/Milovzor part together with Elena Obraztsova as countess in Pique Dame.
Lena Belkina’s successful career is characterised by the cooperation with important conductors such as Marco Armiliato, Adam Fischer, Alessandro de Marchi, Ulf Schirmer, Andrea Sanguineti, Tomas Netopil, Paolo Carignani, Jiri Belohlavek, Ricardo Muti and many others.
Lena Belkina was born in 1987 and started collecting stage experience in her home town Dzhankoi on the Crimean Peninsula when she was a child. Inspired by the performances of the magnificent Maria Callas, she enjoyed taking singing lessons when she was only 14 and completed her piano studies at the music school with distinction. From 2003 to 2009, the aspiring singer studied at the Tchaikovsky National Music Academy in Kiev under Professor Eugenia Miroshnichenko and Nikolai Gorbatov. After winning the most important singing contest of the Ukraine, the B. Gmyria, she succeeded in joining the Leipzig Opera. In 2010, she sang the Elmira part in Floridante during the opening concert of the Handel Festival in Halle. Furthermore, she sang the Etelia part in Meyerbeer’s opera Emma di Resburgo at the Leipzig Bach Festival and in the Vienna Concert House.
The diploma with distinction in the class of Professor Roland Schubert at the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig followed in 2012.
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