Irina Zhurina

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Irina Zhurina (born 28 August 1946) is a Russian coloratura soprano. She grew up in Kharkov and studied singing there. She joined the Kharkov Opera in 1971, taking leading roles in operas such as La Traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor and Rigoletto. In 1975 she became a soloist at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre, where she sang many high-soprano roles, including Antonida in A Life for the Tsar, Snegurochka in The Snow Maiden, the Swan-Princess in The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Marfa in The Tsar’s Bride, the Queen of Shemakha in The Golden Cockerel, Violetta in La Traviata and Rosina in The Barber of Seville. She also toured internationally, performing in Italy (La Scala), Germany, Britain, France, Finland, the United States and Japan.

In 1988, at the Making Music Together festival in Boston, she premiered Boris Tchaikovsky’s Four Poems by Josef Brodsky for soprano and piano, and the work was performed in the Soviet Union the following year. Zhurina remains active in concerts—singing opera arias, Russian songs, baroque works and contemporary pieces written for her—and she teaches singing at the Academic Junior Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. She has made several recordings in Russia and Germany, including Judith and Kashchey the Deathless. In 1993 she was named People’s Artist of Russia by President Boris Yeltsin.