Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov is now represented by 21C Media Group
21C Media Group is thrilled to announce that it now represents Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov [ahb-drah-ZAH-koff]. It was his win at the 2000 Maria Callas International Television Competition that first thrust the “dashing young bass” (Opera magazine) into the international spotlight, leading to his La Scala debut in 2001 at the age of 25. He has since become one of the world’s most sought-after basses, gracing the leading opera houses and concert halls of Europe and America. Hailed as a “sensational bass…who has just about everything – imposing sound, beautiful legato, oodles of finesse” (Independent, UK), Abdrazakov won the 2011 Grammy Award for Best Classical Album with his performance of Verdi’s Requiem with Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The Russian bass began the 2011-12 season at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where he made his role debut as King Henry VIII opposite Anna Netrebko in the company’s premiere, season-opening production of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. Praising his “earthy, muscular voice,” the New York Times’s Anthony Tommasini found the bass “an imposing presence” in the role, and Opera magazine admired his ability to “summon up the rougher, darker timbre necessary for the nastier characters in the bass spectrum,” while possessing such “a fabulous bass voice” with its “sweet-toned, lyric sheen that is ideal for the bel canto repertoire.”
On February 27 Abdrazakov returns to the Met for another role debut, making six appearances as Dosifei in Mussorgsky’s rarely heard Russian epic, Khovanshchina. Singing in his native tongue for the first time outside Russia, the bass will join a strong Russian and Georgian cast that includes Olga Borodina, Vladimir Galouzine, Anatoli Kotscherga, and George Gagnidze, in this revival of August Everding’s production, with Kirill Petrenko on the podium.
Abdrazakov’s other opera engagements last fall included undertaking all four villains in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala and Mustafa in Rossini’s Italian Girl in Algiers at the Vienna State Opera. Later this season, he makes his role debut as Philip II in Verdi’s Don Carlo with the Ópera Perú in Lima and reprises one of his signature roles when he headlines Verdi’s Attila at Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera. When interviewed in Opera News, conductor Riccardo Muti proposed Abdrazakov as “the ideal interpreter of [Attila] for our time”; after his Met appearances in the role, the Times’s Tommasini called him a “young, imposing Attila,” before concluding that “it was the refinement and clarity of his singing, the Verdian accents, that made him so moving.”
On the concert stage, the Russian bass looks forward to several high-profile international engagements this spring: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri with the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra and Marc Minkowski, and – both led by Riccardo Muti – Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo with the Chicago Symphony and Berlioz’s Messe solennelle in Salzburg with the Vienna Philharmonic.
Since making his Met debut in 2004 in Don Giovanni under James Levine, Abdrazakov has appeared there regularly and in 2008-09 he headlined a new production of Verdi’s Attila. At La Scala, he joined Muti in concert for the reopening of the theater in 2004-05, and that same season he sang Moses in a production of Rossini’s Moses and Pharaoh that was recorded and released on CD and DVD. It was in the same role – in a new production led by Muti – that the Russian bass made his Salzburg Festival debut in 2009, and he has also sung Moses with the Italian maestro in Rome. Abdrazakov first appeared at London’s Royal Opera House in 2009, performing Verdi’s Requiem in concert with Antonio Pappano, and he has returned there to sing Don Basilio in Rossini’s Barber of Seville.
The title role in The Marriage of Figaro was the vehicle for Abdrazakov’s 1998 house debut at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater. Among his other signature roles are both the title character and Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni; Méphistophélès in Gounod’s Faust and Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust; Oroveso in Bellini’s Norma; Selim in Rossini’s Turk in Italy; and Assur in his Semiramide. In addition to Attila, the Russian bass is noted for other Verdi roles: Banquo in Macbeth, Walter in Luisa Miller, and the title character in Oberto.
Abdrazakov has appeared with virtually every major opera company in the United States and Europe. In addition to those already mentioned, he has sung on the stages of Barcelona’s Teatre Liceu, Madrid’s Teatro Real, Paris’s Opera Bastille, the San Francisco Opera, the Washington National Opera, and the Los Angeles Opera. On the concert stage, he has given recitals in Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States, and performed with orchestras including the Chicago Symphony, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Bayerische Rundfunk, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France, the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, and Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Among the noted conductors with whom he has collaborated are Riccardo Muti, Valery Gergiev, James Levine, Gianandrea Noseda, Bernard de Billy, Riccardo Frizza, Riccardo Chailly, and Antonio Pappano.
In addition to his Grammy Award-winning recording of Verdi’s Requiem with Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Abdrazakov has recorded unpublished arias by Rossini with Chailly and the Symphony Orchestra of Milan Giuseppe Verdi for Decca and Cherubini’s Mass with Muti and the Bayerische Rundfunk for EMI Classics. For Chandos, he has recorded Shostakovich’s Suite on Verses of Michelangelo and Rachmaninoff’s The Miserly Knight, both with Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic. The bass’s DVD releases include Moïse et Pharaon from La Scala, Oberto from Bilbao, Norma from Parma, and Lucia di Lammermoor from the Metropolitan Opera.
Born in 1976 in the city of Ufa, then the capital of the Soviet republic of Bashkiria, Ildar Abdrazakov traces his lineage back to Genghis Kahn. His parents were both artists: his mother was a painter, and his late father, a director. He began acting in his father’s stage and film productions at age four, and it was these early experiences that inspired him to pursue a career in the arts. On graduating from the Ufa State Institute of Arts, he joined the Bashkirian Opera and Ballet Theatre. In the late 1990s, he won a string of prestigious vocal competitions: the Moscow Grand Prix named after Irina Arkhipova, the Glinka International Vocal Competition, the Rimsky-Korsakov International Competition, and the International Obrazova competition.
Ildar Abdrazakov: upcoming engagements
Feb 27; Mar 1, 6, 10, 13, & 17
New York, NY
Metropolitan Opera
Mussorgsky: Khovanshchina (Dosifei)
Apr 4
London, UK
Mariinksy Theatre Orchestra
Verdi: Requiem
May 25, 27, 29, & 31; Jun 3 & 5
Rome, Italy
Teatro dell’Opera
Verdi: Attila (title role)
Jun 14, 16, & 19
Chicago, IL
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Shostakovich: Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti
Aug 15, 16, & 17
Salzburg, Austria
Vienna Philharmonic
Berlioz: Messe solenelle
Sep 1 & 2
Salzburg, Austria
Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra
Rimsky-Korsakov: Mozart and Salieri (Salieri)
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