Born in Vilnius, Lithuania on Mayy 12, 1981, soprano Asmik Grigorian has established herself as one of the leading international voices of her generation. She was born into an Armenian-Lithuanian family that included opera artists including her father, tenor Gegam Grigorian, who gave her first lessons. Asmik Grigorian graduated from the M. K. Čiurlionis National School of Art in Vilnius in 1999 and entered the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Drama, where she continued her vocal studies, earning her master’s degree in 2006. A lyric soprano, she made her debut at Christiansand in Norway in 2004 and at the Lithuanian National Opera in 2005, and at the Vilnius City Opera as a founding member from its creation in 2006. She then appeared at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, where, from 2012 onwards, she performed roles in Puccini's Il Trittico, interpreting the three protagonists, Otello (Verdi), Madama Butterfly (Puccini), The Player (Prokofiev), and Rusalka (Dvořák). Her repertoire, including other operas such as The Queen of Spades (Tchaikovsky), Sweeney Todd (Sondheim) and Werther (Massenet), continued to expand. A favored interpreter of Tchaikovsky, she appeared in L'Enchanteresse at the Theater an der Wien in 2014, conducted by Valery Gergiev, and in Eugène Onéguine at the Comic-Opera in Berlin in 2016. After winning the International Opera Award for Revelation and appearing at the BBC Proms in London in 2016, Asmik Grigorian continued her ascent on the stages of Stockholm, Barcelona, the Salzburg Festival in Wozzeck (Berg) in 2017 then Salome (R. Strauss) in 2018 and 2019, at La Scala in Milan in Die tote Stadt (Korngold) and at the Edinburgh Festival in 2019. In 2020, she made her debut at the Wiener Staatsoper, Berlin's Deutsche Oper, and Madrid's Teatro Real, before appearing the following year at the Bayreuth Festival, London's Royal Opera House and Paris' Opéra Bastille for a series of recitals. She then did performances in Japan and at the Arena di Verona in 2023, ending the year alongside Jonas Kaufmann in Turandot (Puccini) at the Vienna Opera. She was invited by baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky to perform on his 2016 album War, Peace, Love and Sorrow. Asmik Grigorian released her album Dissonance in 2022, which found her performing the melodies of Rachmaninov with pianist Lukas Geniušas. In 2023, she released Laws of Solitude. Strauss: Four Last Songs which found her performing with the Orchestre philharmonique de Radio-France conducted by Mikko Franck and accompanied by Markus Hinterhäuser on piano.
