Albina Shagimuratova has been hailed by Opera News as “a phenomenon that must be heard to be believed” and by the New York Times for her “riveting Lucia.” She first came to international attention as the Gold Medal winner at the 2007 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. This was quickly followed by her European opera debut as the Queen of the Night at the Salzburg Festival under the baton of Riccardo Muti. She has come to be regarded as the world’s leading interpreter of this role in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and has sung it at the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House, the Teatro alla Scala, the Wiener Staatsoper, the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, San Francisco Opera, the Bolshoi Theatre, the Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, the Hamburg Staatsoper, and the Lucerne Festival, among others.
She portrayed the legendary soprano Adelina Patti in a new film version of Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina, released in April 2017. In September 2018, Opera Rara released a recording of Rossini’s Semiramide with Shagimuratova in the leading role. Other engagements for the current season include La traviata at the Wiener Staatsoper, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Il Paria at the Barbican Center in London as well as Britten’s War Requiem at the Bruknerhaus Linz, the National Center for the Arts in Ottawa, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Gasteig Hall in Munich, and the Musikverein Wien.
Recent stage successes include Don Giovanni (Glyndebourne Festival) and La traviata (Houston Grand Opera). Other triumphs include Lucia di Lammermoor (Metropolitan Opera, Teatro alla Scala, Los Angeles Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Bolshoi Theatre, Houston Grand Opera) and Rigoletto (Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera).
She reopened the Bolshoi Theatre with a new production of Ruslan and Lyudmila by visionary stage director Dmitry Chernyakov which was conducted by Vladimir Jurowski; at that theatre she has also appeared in recital. The President of the Russian Federation awarded her the titles of Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation, People’s Artist of Tatarstan, and she was personally awarded the Tukai State Award by President Minnikhanov of Tatarstan.