Soprano Asmik Grigorian, born in Vilnius to the Lithuanian soprano Irena Milkevičiūtė and the renown Armenian tenor Gegham Grigorian, was doing a great job adding roles to her repertoire, performing on increasingly prestigious stages (Theater an der Wien in 2014 in Tchaikovsky’s Enchantress, Berlin’s Komische Oper in 2016 in Onegin), even getting a break as Wozzeck’s Marie at Salzburg in 2017. And then… boom! When Romeo Castellucci turned the Salzburg Felsenreitschule into an abyss of stone and milk for Strauss’ Wildean/Biblical epos in 2019, her Salome catapulted her into the spotlight of opera stardom. In a role usually reserved for tungsten-plated dramatic sopranos, her voice displayed an edge of lyric steel that sliced right through the thrust of the Vienna Philharmonic. If Asmik Grigorian asks you for the head of Jokanaan, you’d better reach for the sword before this terrific and terrifying performer turns her sweet caressing voice into a lethal snarl.
Asmik Grigorian’s exciting upcoming projects include a new production of Butterfly at the Vienna State Opera, of Rusalka under Ivor Bolton at Madrid’s Teatro Real Madrid and a muchanticipated debut at the Paris Opera in Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades. For her debut appearance in Geneva, the drama will be less palpable, but an evening in the company of Asmik Grigorian’s familiars Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff promises nonetheless a very exciting first meeting with this extraordinary vocal artist on her cultural home turf.