Ukrainian soprano Olga Kulchynska’s “palpable warmth, and sensitivity “ (The New York Times) and “voluptuous singing line and the rich timbre” (Le Monde) allows her to sing a large variety of roles ranging from Handel to Poulenc at the world’s leading opera houses, including Opernhaus Zürich, Opéra national de Paris, and the Gran Teatre del Liceu. Recent standout performances include her role debut as Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Salzburger Festspiele, Natasha in Prokofiev’s War and Peace at the Bayerische Staatsoper, and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera.
Kulchynska’s 2025/26 season includes a diverse palette of roles, starting with a return to the role of Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte at the Staatsoper Hamburg, followed by two French roles at the Wiener Staatsoper. She first makes her role debut as Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust, followed by Blanche de la Force in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. In February, she returns to the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich for Marguerite, followed by her role debut as Contessa in a new production of Le nozze di Figaro at Dutch National Opera. She finishes her season with her debut as Tatiana in Eugene Onegin and her house debut at the Santa Fe Opera.
Highlights from previous seasons include Mathilde in Wilhelm Tell at Opéra de Lausanne, Mimi in La Bohème at the Royal Opera House and Opernhaus Zürich, Ginevra in Ariodante and Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia at Opéra de Paris, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Met, the Bolshoi Theater, and the Bayerische Staatsoper, Fiordiligi in Così Fan Tutte, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper Hamburg, Opernhaus Zürich, and at the Castell de Peralada Festival, Ilia in Idomeneo at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Musetta in La bohème at Opera di Roma and Dutch National Opera, and the Met, Liù in Turandot at the Met, Tsarevna the Swan-Bird The Tale of Tsar Saltan at La Monnaie in Brussels, Gänsemagd in Humperdinck’s Königskinder at the Dutch National Opera, Juliette in Romeo et Juliette at Opéra de Rouen, Blanche de la Force in Dialogues des Carmélites, Giulietta in I Capuleti e I Montecchi, Musetta, Adina in L’elisir d’amore and Zerlina in Don Giovanni at Opernhaus Zürich, Volkhova in Sadko, Marfa in the production of Rimsy-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride, Corinna in Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims, Gilda in Rigoletto at the Bolshoi Theater, 7 deaths of Maria Callas directed by Marina Abramović at Royal Theatre Carré and Micaëla in Carmen at the Arena di Verona, the Royal Opera House, and the Wiener Staatsoper
On the concert stage, Kulchynska was heard in Rachmaninoff's The Bells in Utrecht, the Edinburgh Festival and Amsterdam with maestro Karina Canellakis, in Rossini’s Stabat Mater in Ljubljana at the Cankarjev Dom, in the title role of Iolanta in concert at Lighthouse, Poole's Centre for the Arts with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra and maestro Keri-Lynn Wilson, both at the Polish National Opera in Warsaw and at Berlin’s Schlossgarten Schönhausen. The performance was recorded live for Deutsche Grammophon.
Olga Kulchynska was educated in music theory at the R. Glier Kyiv Institute of Music and continued with vocal studies at the Pyotr Tchaikovsky National Music Academy of Ukraine, and is a graduate of the Young Artist Program of Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. In addition to placing first at the Viñas Competition, Kulchynska has been the recipient of prizes in numerous international vocal competitions including the Operalia Competition, the Bul-Bul International Vocal Competition in Baku, and the Mykola Lysenko International Music Competition in Kiev. She maintains an active presence on social media, with accounts on Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok.
