Ildar Abdrazakov was born in 1976 in Ufa, in the Bashkir region of the Soviet Union, and trained at the Ufa State Institute of Arts before joining the Bashkirian Opera and Ballet Theatre. He won a string of vocal competitions in the late 1990s, including the Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov competitions, and the Maria Callas International Television Competition in 2000. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2004 as Masetto/Leporello in Don Giovanni under James Levine and has since become a leading bass at houses including La Scala, the Royal Opera House, and the Mariinsky Theatre.

Abdrazakov is regarded as one of the foremost basses of his generation, celebrated for Verdi and Rossini roles such as Attila and Moses, and he shared a Grammy Award in 2010 for a recording of Verdi’s Requiem with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He became inaugural Artistic Director of the Elena Obraztsova International Academy of Music in St Petersburg in 2015 and subsequently founded the Ildar Abdrazakov Foundation to support young musicians. In 2026 he became artistic director of the Mikhailovsky Theatre, and he was named Honoured Artist of Russia in 2021.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ildar_Abdrazakov