Anita Rachvelishvili

Thanks in part to the support of conductor Daniel Barenboim, mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili found places on the world's top operatic stages unusually quickly after finishing her studies. She has proven equally adept at French, Italian, and Russian opera. Rachvelishvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, then in the Soviet Union on September 28, 1984. Her musical education began with piano studies, but she switched to singing at the Tbilisi State Conservatory, where she studied with Manana Egadze and was supported by a scholarship from the office of the President of Georgia. Already performing major Italian roles while still in school, she was invited in 2007 to apply to the La Scala Academy in Milan. There she was heard by Barenboim and invited to take the title role in a new production of Carmen he was developing. Her appearance at La Scala as Carmen, opposite star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, was a hit, and the role defined the first part of Rachvelishvili's career. She has performed at the Metropolitan Opera, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin, the San Francisco Opera, Teatro Regio in Turin, and the Canadian Opera Theater, among other houses. Her repertoire has broadened beyond Bizet to include Dalila in Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila, Dulcinée in Massenet's Don Quichotte, and Konchakovna in Borodin's Prince Igor. At the Michigan Opera Theater in Detroit in 2012-2013, she sang the role of Amneris in Verdi's Aida, and the following year, she sang Aida in major European opera houses. Rachvelishvili began performing vocal recitals with pianist David Aladashvili in 2015 and, unusually for an opera singer, she has led her own jazz band, performing at the Le Poisson Rouge club in New York. Rachvelishvili was signed to the Sony Classical label and released her debut album, Anita, in 2018. In the same year, Sony Classical released her album An Italian Night: Live from the Waldbühne Berlin. In 2021, on Sony Classical, she released the song recital Élégie, and she starred as Santuzza in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's concert version of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana on its album release in 2022.
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