Maya Dashuk

Among the most promising operatic sopranos to emerge from the turn-of-the-21st century era is Russian-born Maya Dashuk. Winner of several competitions, including the prestigious Montserrat Caballé Song Contest in 1999, she has garnered rave reviews in a broad range of roles: Musetta (Puccini's La bohème), Liu (Puccini's Turandot), Micaela (Bizet's Carmen), Tatiana (Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin), Donna Elvira (Mozart's Don Giovanni), and many others. She has appeared at a number of the leading operatic venues in Russia, Italy, France, Switzerland, and the U.S., and also regularly appears at the major recital halls across the globe. In addition, she has recorded for such popular labels as Naxos, Arthaus Musik, and TDK. Dashuk's many fans will assert that her voice is as attractive as her stunning physical appearance: her powerful, lyrical voice projects both lush beauty and tonal heft, allowing her voice to soar above heavily scored passages and to impart a new depth in many roles; her Micaela is, for once, not so passive. Maya Dashuk was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1976. She studied music at the Rimsky-Korsakov St. Petersburg State Conservatory. From 1996, Dashuk scored numerous successes in vocal competitions: she was a prizewinner that year at the Diaghilev Competition and, in 1999, at the Glinka Competition. Later in 1999 her greatest triumph came when she won first prize at the Montserrat Caballé Competition in Andorra. That same year she made her Rome debut at the Teatro dell'Opera as Musetta. She reprised the role the following year there and went on to make appearances at the Mariinski Theater in St. Petersburg as Tatiana and Violetta in Verdi's La Traviata. In 2001 she sang Violetta again, this time at the Verdi Festival in Parma. That same year she entered the Placido Domingo Operalia World Opera Competition in Washington, where she captured third prize. Dashuk made her first major recording in 2003 when she appeared as Micaela in the Franco Zeffirelli production of Carmen at the Arena di Verona. The TDK DVD of the performance was issued to rave reviews in 2004 (reissued in 2010). In 2004 Dashuk branched out when she sang the mezzo-soprano role of Carmen at the Avenches Opera Festival in Switzerland. She reprised the role with great success at the Seoul Arts Center in South Korea in November 2007. Among Dashuk's later recordings is the acclaimed 2009 Naxos DVD of Puccini's La Rondine, wherein she portrays Lisette.