Born in Dushanbe, Tagikistan, soprano IRINA VASILIEVA (Parasha) began her music education as a pianist graduating from Dushanbe’s Special Music School in 1991. From 1991, she studied composition at St. Petersburg’s Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory, where she began vocal training in 1994. In 1999, the year of her graduation from the Conservatory, she won several awards for voice including the Diploma of the First International Elena Obrastsova Competition and the Special Prize in the International Competition for Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades roles in Verona, Italy; last year she won the Diploma at the Fourth International Rimsky-Korsakov competition.

Her repertoire includes the roles of Violetta in La traviata, Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, and Natasha in Prokofiev’s War and Peace, among others. She has been a soloist with the Kirov Opera since 2000. In September of 2000 she performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion as one of the Flower Maidens in Wagner’s Parsifal with members of the Kirov Opera in a concert performance with Plácido Domingo.