Marina Mishuk

• Honoured Artist of Russia (1983)
• Recipient of the Onegin National Opera Award (2020)
• Recipient of the Medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland”, 1^st class (2020)
• Diploma recipient at an international competition in Paris (1976)
• Diploma recipient at the 5^th All-Union Glinka Competition of Vocalists (Vilnius, 1971)

The opera accompanist Marina Vasilievna Mishuk studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov Leningrad State Conservatory under chamber ensemble maestri Sofia Vakman, Maria Karandashova and Grunya Gankina. She began her career as an opera accompanist in the vocals class of Sergei Shaposhnikov, subsequently working for six years at Leningrad’s Maly Opera Theatre, from where she moved to the Kirov (now Mariinsky) Theatre. Her first role there was in Rodion Shchedrin’s Dead Souls.

In her four decades of service to the theatre, Marina Mishuk has appeared as the musical director of a vast number of opera premieres. An outstanding connoisseur of the German style, she leads the entire German language repertoire of the Mariinsky Theatre. Has rehearsed singers for Wagnerian premieres including Parsifal (1997), Der fliegende Holländer (1998), Lohengrin (1999), the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (1999–2003), Tristan und Isolde (2005 and 2024) and Tannhäuser (2019). Her repertoire at the Mariinsky Theatre includes such productions as Salome, Elektra, Khovanshchina, Salammbô, The Gambler, Betrothal in a Monastery, Dead Souls, Iolanta, Il trovatore, Christmas Eve, Jenůfa, Falstaff, The Fiery Angel and Die Fledermaus.

In 2024 she prepared the premiere of a new production of Musorgsky’s opera Salammbô at the Bolshoi Theatre of Russia.

In addition to her work on opera repertoire, Marina Mishuk also spears as an accompanist on the concert stage. She has appeared with Sergei Leiferkus, Vasily Gerello, Anna Netrebko, Olga Trifonova, Mikhail Petrenko, Sergei Semishkur, Yevgeny Akimov and numerous other artists, in addition to recording with Konstantin Pluzhnikov more than ten CDs of romances by Russian composers.

Marina Mishuk has toured with the Mariinsky Opera Company on numerous occasions to countries through Europe as well as to the USA, Japan and South Korea.

Marina Mishuk also translates opera librettos to Russian. St Petersburg theatres have seen her translations of Die Kluge by Orff, The Medium by Menotti and Gianni Schicchi by Puccini.