Asmik Grigorian

Soprano Asmik Grigorian has excelled in operatic roles from several national traditions and of multiple voice types. She issued her solo recording debut, an album of Rachmaninov songs, in 2022. Grigorian was born in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius on May 12, 1981. Her father, Gegham Grigoryan, was a tenor from Armenia, and her mother was Lithuanian soprano Irena Milkevičiūtė. Her brother, Vartan Grigorian, is a noted conductor. Asmik attended the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art in Vilnius, graduating in 1999. She went on to the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, earning a master's degree in 2006 while married to opera singer Giedrius Žalys and raising a small son. (She later married director Vasily Barkhatov and had a daughter in 2016.) Grigorian made well-regarded debut appearances in Lithuania, Latvia, and Russia (at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg) before performing in what became trademark Tchaikovsky roles at the Theater an der Wien and the Komische Oper Berlin in the early 2010s. An award as Best Newcomer at the International Opera Awards in London in 2016 spread Grigorian's reputation, and that year, she appeared on the album Dmitri Hvorostovsky Sings of War, Peace, Love and Sorrow. Grigorian made her debut appearance at the Salzburg Festival in 2017, singing the role of Marie in Berg's Wozzeck. The next several years brought appearances at various major European houses, including Oper Frankfurt (in the title role in Puccini's Manon Lescaut) in 2019-2020, and the Wiener Staatsoper, the Mariinsky Theatre, and the Deutsche Oper Berlin as Cio-Cio San in Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Several major debuts were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but Grigorian bounced back with appearances during 2021-2022 that included the Royal Opera House in London (in Janáček's Jenufa) and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (as Strauss' Salome). She also performed that season at the AIDS-Stiftung Gala in Berlin. Signed to the Alpha label, she released her debut solo album, Dissonances, in 2022; on that recital of songs by Rachmaninov, she was backed by pianist Lukas Geniušas.
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