Since her acclaimed performance in the fall of 2006 of Rachel in the Royal Opera Covent Garden’s concerts of Halevy’s La Juive, Russian born soprano Marina Poplavskaya has established herself internationally as one of the most arresting young artists to be heard today. The British press and public hailed her as a major new singer, and as a result of this great success she received invitations from important theatres throughout the world such as the Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera, Bavarian State Opera, Munich, Berlin State Opera, Netherlands Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and many others including the Salzburg Festival.

Marina Poplavskaya will begin her 2011/2012 season as Violetta at Covent Garden. After appearing in Act 4 of Otello opposite Placido Domingo in Gala performances at the Royal Opera, she will return to the Metropolitan Opera as Marguerite opposite Jonas Kaufmann in the new production of Faust. In February of 2012, she will make her debut at the Bavarian State Opera as Violetta and subsequently in March at the Vienna State Opera as Amelia in Simon Boccanegra. She will then sing Leonora in the new production of Il Trovatore at La Monnaie in Brussels. Future projects also include her debut as Lisa in The Queen of Spades at the Vienna State Opera, a new production of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, Eugene Onegin at the Metropolitan Opera, and Otello and Tannhauser at the Berlin State Opera, both under Daniel Barenboim. She will also sing Verdi’s Requiem under Seymopn Bychkov and Desdemona in Tokyo.

Alongside her yearly returns to Covent Garden and Metropolitan Opera, Marina Poplavskaya has appeared in Avignon, Valencia, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Salzburg, Zurich, The Netherlands, Los Angeles, Seoul and Israel.
Her concert repertory includes Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Mozart’s Requiem, Poulenc’s Messa di Requiem, as well as Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 14, and Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs.

Marina Poplavskaya was born in Moscow and studied at the State M Ippolitov-Ivanov Music Institute with P. Tarassov and I. Shapur. After winning numerous prizes in international competitions, which included the first prize in the Maria Callas Grand Prix in Athens, she began her professional career at the New Opera Theatre in Moscow making her operatic debut as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin. She was also a soloist at the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Dantchenko Moscow Academic Opera Theatre. She subsequently made her debut at the Bolshoi Theatre as Ann Truelove in The Rake’s Progress, followed by Maria in Mazeppa. In 2004, Marina Poplavskaya joined the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme of the Royal Opera Covent Garden and made her company debut there as the Third Norn in Götterdammerung under Antonio Pappano.