The Russian soprano Venera Gimadieva made a splash at major opera houses in Britain and the U.S. in the mid-2010s with a light coloratura soprano voice well suited to bel canto repertory. She has also performed Russian and French opera. Gimadieva was born in Kazan in Russia's Tatarstan region, then part of the Soviet Union, on May 28, 1984. Her parents, an educator and a military officer, had no particular orientation toward music, but she took up singing at the age of 11 for enjoyment and was heard by some of her teachers at school. They teamed up to give her the best vocal education they could. She graduated from the Kazan Music College and went on to the St. Petersburg Conservatory. By the 2008-2009 season she was appearing in big Italian roles at the St. Petersburg Opera, including Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, and in 2009 she was accepted into the prestigious young artists' program at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. A first prize at the International Shalyapin (Chaliapin) Competition in 2010 helped her career along, and she officially joined the Bolshoi cast in 2011, playing Ksenia in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov as well as bel canto roles over the next several years. She also sang Brahms' Ein deutsches Requiem in Moscow in 2014 with the Russian National Orchestra under Mikhail Pletnev. The mid-2010s saw Gimadieva make prestigious international appearances: singing Violetta in an acclaimed new production of Verdi's La Traviata at Britain's Glyndebourne Festival in 2014; playing Juliette opposite Juan Diego Flórez's Romeo in Lima, Peru; and making well-publicized debuts at Covent Garden in London and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, both as Violetta. The 2017-2018 season saw Gimadieva make her debut at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in a recital of Russian songs with her husband, Pavel Nebolsin, at the keyboard. She released her debut solo album, Momento Immobile, in 2018; the program featured arias by Bellini, Rossini, and Donizetti and saw Gimadieva backed by the venerable Hallé Orchestra under Gianluca Marcianò. ~ James Manheim