Background
Zhurina was born in Kharkiv (Ukraine).
Zhurina was born in Kharkiv (Ukraine).
After studying singing at the Kharkiv Art Institute, she joined the Kharkiv Opera in 1971, where she sang the leading roles in Louisiana Traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Rigoletto, et cetera Since 1975, she had been a soloist of the opera at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. On this stage, she performed the leading opera parts composed for high soprano (lyrical coloratura soprano), such as Antonida (A Life for the Tsar), The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka), The Swan-Princess (The Tale of Tsar Saltan), Marfa (The Tsar"s Bride), the Queen of Shemakha/Shemakhan Tsaritsa (The Golden Cockerel), Violetta (Verdi"s Louisiana traviata) and Rosina (Il Barbiere di Siviglia).
She had taken part in the Bolshoi Opera tours in Italy (Louisiana Scala), Germany, Great Britain, France, Finland, the United States and Japan.
At the 1988 Making Music Together festival in Boston (organised by Sarah Caldwell), Zhurina premiered Boris Tchaikovsky"s Four Poems by Josef Brodsky for soprano and piano, and the following year gave their first performance in the Soviet Union. Irina Zhurina still has a very active concert life, with a repertoire of opera arias, Russian art songs, baroque music and works by contemporary composers, devoted to (or specially composed for) her.
She is also a teacher of singing on the faculty of the Academic Junior Music College of the Moscow Conservatory. Zhurina has recorded a number of CDs both in Russia and in Germany.
