Olga Peretyatko

Olga Peretyatko, a Russian soprano, rose to prominence through her interpretations of Mozart operas and Italian bel canto roles while also exploring French and Russian vocal repertoire.

Born in Leningrad—now St. Petersburg, Russia—on May 21, 1980, she began performing as a child in the Mariinsky Theatre’s renowned children’s choir, appearing alongside leading international opera figures. During her teenage years she committed fully to vocal training and entered the Hanns Eisler-Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, later joining the Hamburg Opera Studio and attending classes at Rome’s Accademia Rossiniana. These studies culminated in a 2006 role in Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.

A decisive career step arrived the next year when she earned second prize at Plácido Domingo’s Operalia competition in Paris, an achievement that quickly led to a 2009 Toronto staging of Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol. The production subsequently traveled to theaters in the United States, France, and the Netherlands, and she took leading parts in further Rossini Festival presentations.

International recognition followed during the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 seasons with first appearances at the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, and additional major venues. In summer 2014 she performed before an audience of 600,000 at Paris’s Bastille Day celebration. Return engagements at Vienna and the Met, together with other significant debuts, occupied her 2015 and 2016 calendars.

In 2017 she ventured into French repertoire, performing in a production of Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles directed by Wim Wenders and led by Daniel Barenboim. The 2018-2019 season brought performances in China and Japan.

Signed to Sony Classical in 2011, Peretyatko issued several well-received recordings on the label. Her album Rossini! (2015) received the ECHO Klassik award, while Russian Light (2017) earned the OPUS Klassik; she contributed to The Secret Fauré in 2018 and released the recital Mozart+ the following year. By then her 2018 divorce from conductor Michele Mariotti had itself become a subject of operatic press coverage.