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Elena Prokina was born in Odessa, where she
began to study singing and acting at the Children's Art Studio at the
Odessa State Conservatoire. She moved to St.Petersburg (then Leningrad)
where she concluded her education at the Leningrad State Conservatoire. As
a postgraduate student in 1988, Elena Prokina was invited to join the
Kirov (now Mariinsky) Opera Company, where she made her debut in many
leading parts, including Violetta in La traviata, Desdemona in Otello,
Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, Natasha in War and Peace, Marguerite in Faust
and Pauline in The Gambler, until she left the Kirov Opera in 1992.
In 1991, Elena Prokina won the First prize
at the Maria Caniglia International Vocal Competition (Sulmona, Italy).
She has been awarded the Grammy Classical Award for performing the leading
role of Natasha Rostova in Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace, recorded by
Philips, and the Evening Standard Classical Music and Opera Award as the
Outstanding Opera Performance. She rapidly became noted for her intensely
committed portrayals of vulnerable heroines, roles in which she could use
not only her vocal skills but also her abilities as an actress.
Elena Prokina has taken part in the
Edinburgh, Glyndebourne and Aldeburgh Festivals in the United Kingdom and
the Bregenz Opera festival in Austria, as well as having appeared in opera
houses such as the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden, and in San Carlos, Lisbon, Monte Carlo, Houston, Dallas,
Los Angeles, Sydney and Zurich. She has taken part in productions by Temur
Chkeidze, John Cox, Peter Hall, Harry Kupfer, Trevor Nunn, and Graham
Vick, and has worked with conductors such as Claudio Abbado in Boccanegra
with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Riccardo Muti as Blanche in
Dialogue des Carmelites at La Scala, Vladimir Ashkenazy, James Conlon, Sir
Edward Downes, Lawrence Foster, Bernard Haitink, Mikhail Pletnev, Sir
Simon Rattle in Jenufa with the Berlin Philharmonic, Mstislav
Rostropovich, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Yuri Temirkanov, Nello Santi,
Vladimir Ashkenazy and many others.
Elena Prokina's repertoire includes, in
addition to the roles mentioned above, Micaela in Carmen, Elisabetta in
Don Carlo, Desdemona in Otello, Lucrezia in I due Foscari and the title
roles in Puccini's Tosca, Weber's Euryanthe and Janacek's Katia Kabanova.
Recent performances include Concerts of
Iolanta with Royal Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and Shostakovich Symphony
14 with the Budapest Radio Symphony Orchestra at Cite de la Musique in
Paris. Recent opera productions include Simon Boccanegra (Amelia), Eugene Onegin (Tatiana) with Hamburgische Staatsoper, Elsa in Lohengrin with Asociacion
Bilbaina de Amigos de la Oper in Bilbao, Tatiana in Eugene Onegin with San
Francisco Opera, Lisa in Pique Dame with Teatro alla Scala conducted by
Yuri Temirkanov, and performances of Britten's War Requiem and
Rachmaninov's The Bells at the 2005 Three Choirs Festival in Worcester
with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
Future operatic engagements include Tatiana in Eugene Onegin in Lisbon and Jenufa in Malaga.
General Management
Aminah
Domloge, Pro
Artist
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