Originally from Russia and of dual French-Russian nationality, Elena Galitskaya trained at the Moscow Academy of Choral Arts, graduating in 2007. She now divides her time between France and Italy.

Since her operatic début at the Opéra National de Lyon in the Shostakovich operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki in 2009, she is regularly invited to perform there, notably at the 2011 Mozart Festival where she alternated the roles of Despina, Zerlina and Barbarina. She also played Frasquita in Carmen (2012), directed by Olivier Py, Ilia in Mozart’s Idomeneo and Eurydice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.

Notable roles from 2015 to 2018 included Fiorilla in Il Turco in Italia at the Dijon Opéra, Sophie (Werther), Pamina at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste and the Italian singer in Capriccio at the Theater an der Wien. In 2017, she made her début at the Théâtre du Capitole of Toulouse as Lisette in Puccini’s La Rondine, then at the Graz Opera where she sang the Contessa di Folleville role in Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims, and finally at the Aix en Provence Festival Echo in Ariadne auf Naxos.

During the 2018-2019 season, she played Papagena at the La Monnaie Théâtre Royal in a production by Roméo Castelluci. She then sang Pamina at the Teatro Bellini in Catania, then Micaela in Carmen at the Dijon Opéra.

More recently, she played Pauline in a production of La Vie Parisienne at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, directed by Christian Lacroix, then Amour, still at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, in Orfeo ed Euridice. Her performance as Fiorilla in Il Turco in Italia at the Wallonia Royal Theatre was a triumph.

Named an HSBC Laureate of the Académie Européenne de Musique of the Festival International d’Art Lyrique d’Aix en Provence in 2010, the following year she won third prize and the public prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.

Languages spoken: French, English and Russian

Photo credit: ARR