The role of Carmen is a dream for many singers, but in order to be able to perform it well it is not just vocal difficulties that must be overcome, you must, in addition, possess good acting skills. Mariinsky Theatre soloist Zlata Bulycheva has all of these qualities. Unfettered, passionate and with a very fine mezzo-soprano voice, Zlata enchanted the audience.
Izvestia
Zlata Bulycheva also proved herself to be an acclaimed mistress of her art, coping with Stravinsky’s complex tessitura and rhythmic inventions, and she succeeded in creating an operatically vivid image, while at the same time she did not go beyond the demands of that certain severity of the oratorio style and the idea of the plot and the character.
Kultura
• Prize-winner at the XI International Tchaikovsky Competition (Moscow, 1999, 4th prize)
• Prize-winner at the II International Rimsky-Korsakov Competition (St Petersburg, 1998, 3rd prize)
• Prize-winner at the II International Pechkovsky Opera Singers' Competition (St Petersburg, 1996, 1st prize)
Zlata Bulycheva was born in Petrozavodsk. She graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov St Petersburg State Conservatory in 1995 (class of Professor Iraida Levando), continuing as a post-graduate student at the Conservatoire (class of Professor Kira Izotova). She trained at the Stuttgart Academy of Music. Zlata Bulycheva has been a soloist with the Mariinsky Opera Company since 1996.
Repertoire at the Mariinsky Theatre:
Vanya (A Life for the Tsar)
Ratmir (Ruslan and Lyudmila)
Filippyevna (Eugene Onegin)
Amelfa the Housekeeper (The Golden Cockerel)
Marfa (Khovanshchina)
Konchakovna (Prince Igor)
Boyarynya Morozova (The Oprichnik)
Lel (The Snow Maiden)
Lyubasha (The Tsar's Bride)
Alkonost (The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya)
Jocasta (Œdipus Rex)
Duenna (Betrothal in a Monastery)
Semyon’s Mother (Semyon Kotko)
Princess Marya, Sonya (War and Peace)
Granny Vasilisa and Ghost of Alexei’s Mother (The Story of a Real Man, concert performance)
Miss Pratt (Lolita)
Preziosilla (La forza del destino)
Princess Eboli (Don Carlo)
Amneris (Aida)
Emilia (Otello)
Anna, Didon (Les Troyens)
Carmen (Carmen)
The Princess (Suor Angelica)
Mezzo-soprano (stage version of Verdi's Requiem)
Ascanio (Benvenuto Cellini, concert performance)
Fenena (Nabucco)
Marguerite (La Damnation de Faust)
Dalila (Samson et Dalila)
Idamante (Idomeneo, rè di Creta)
Erda (Das Rheingold, Siegfried)
Waltraute (Götterdämmerung)
Geneviève (Pelléas et Mélisande)
Mistress Bentson (Lakmé)
La Cieca (La Gioconda, concert performance)
Zulma (L’italiana in Algeri, chamber version)
Zlata Bulycheva's concert repertoire includes cantata-oratorio works by Bach, Pergolesi, Mozart, Rossini, Beethoven, Verdi, Berlioz, Wagner, Mahler and Prokofiev.
Zlata Bulycheva has toured with the Mariinsky Opera Company in Europe, the USA, South America and Japan.
Her recordings include Musorgsky's Boris Godunov and Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges (with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev, Philips Classics).