Aigul Khismatullina

…The show currently boasts two astonishing performers – Aigul Khismatullina, who hails from Tatarstan, as the Queen of the Night, and the Hungarian-Romanian baritone Gyula Orendt as Papageno. Khismatullina’s singing deservedly brings the house down, with her pure coloratura, and her easy mastery of her notoriously exposed and stratospherically high second-act revenge aria: I’ve never heard that sung with such ice-cold perfection.
Michael Church’s blog, 17 December 2022

But it is Aigul Khismatullina’s beguiling Queen of the Night who earns her place in the memories of the audience: initially velvety and smooth but soon ramping up her vocal performance with a thrilling potency for the “Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen” she makes it sounds as if one is hearing it for the first time all over again.
Alexander Cohen, The Indiependent, 19 December 2022

…It was perhaps Aigul Khismatullina’s Queen of the Night… that was the true star. This role is not all about the high notes (although they were perfectly placed); every emotion was brilliantly conveyed, as was the queen’s power.
Colin Clarke, Seen and Heard International, 23 December 2022

Soprano

Mariinsky Theatre Guest Soloist

• Prize-winner at the XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition (Moscow – St Petersburg, 2019; 2^nd prize)
• Prize-winner at the 56^th Tenor Viñas Contest (Barcelona, 2019; 1^st prize)
• Prize-winner at the Young Performers’ Competition of the 11^th Rashit Vagapov International Tatar Song Festival (Kazan, 2015; 1^st prize)
• Prize-winner at the 2^nd All-Russian Music Competition (Moscow, 2014; 3^rd prize)
• Prize-winner at the 7^th White Acacia International Festival and Competition of Russian Romance (Yoshkar-Ola, 2009; 1^st prize)

Aigul Khismatullina was born in Naberezhnye Chelny (Tatarstan). In 2014 she graduated from the Zhiganov Kazan State Conservatoire (class of Klara Khayrutdinova), following which she undertook an assistant traineeship under Albina Shagimuratova (2014–2016).

From 2016 to 2017 she was a soloist at the Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre in Vladivostok.

From 2017 to 2021 the singer was a fellow of the Atkins Young Artists Program at the Mariinsky Theatre.

In 2018 she made her Mariinsky Theatre debut as the Nightingale in Stravinsky’s opera Le Rossignol.

Repertoire at the Mariinsky Theatre:
Antonida (A Life for the Tsar)
Lyudmila (Ruslan and Lyudmila)
Snow Maiden (The Snow Maiden)
Marfa (The Tsar’s Bride)
Swan-Princess (The Tale of Tsar Saltan)
Nightingale (Le Rossignol)
A Pale Lady (The Gambler, Primorsky Stage)
Ninetta (The Love for Three Oranges)
Sirin (The Nose)
Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte)
Adina (L’elisir d’amore)
Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor)
Gilda (Rigoletto)
Nannetta (Falstaff)
Lauretta (Gianni Schicchi)
Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf Naxos)
Marguerite de Valois (Les Huguenots)
Olympia (Les Contes d’Hoffmann)
Lakmé (Lakmé)
Mélisande (Pelléas et Mélisande)
Soprano roles in Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and Orff’s Carmina Burana

Has sung in the premieres of new Mariinsky Theatre productions of Pelléas et Mélisande (2019), Lakmé (2023), Les Huguenots and Ariadne auf Naxos (2024).

In 2020 she portrayed the Queen of the Night at the Royal Opera House Muscat (Oman), in 2021 – Gilda at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, in 2022 she performed the part of the Queen of the Night at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the part of Lakmé at the Philharmonie Berlin.
Information for July 2024