Tehmine Schaeffer

Award-winning Armenian soprano Tehmine Schaeffer is one of the leading singers of her generation, whose repertoire includes both opera and concert works. After completing her singing, organ and composition studies with honors at the Komitas Conservatory in Yerevan, she continued her singing career in Moscow and currently lives in Vienna. She is a winner of several international singing competitions in Russia, including first prize at the Victoria International Vocal and Choral Festival Competition 2014 in Kazan and special prizes at the Moscow International Competition of Russian Romantic Songs Singers Romansiada 2015 and at the 25th Glinka International Vocal Contest 2014 she was awarded the Special prize “For the best work written after 1975”.

On the concert platform, she performed with Yuri Bashmet and the New Russia State Symphony Orchestra at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow in 2010. She also sang Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with the Vyatka Chamber Orchestra, Gliere's Concerto for Coloratura Soprano with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra in Moscow's Cairo Opera House and Tariverdiev's Concerto for Coloratura Soprano with the Bolshoi Orchestra at the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall.

Tehmine Schaeffer's opera roles include Podtochina's daughter in Shostakovich's The Nose, the first flower woman in Wagner's Parsifal with the National Opera of Lyon (2011/2012), Nerina in Haydn's La Fedeltà Premiata and Arsena in Strauss's 'The Gypsy Baron' with the International Opera Academy in Vienna and the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Magic Flute with the Burg Gars Opera in Austria (2017) and in the Wuxi Grand Theater in China (2018). She has performed at many prestigious international festivals including the Festival International d'Aix-en-Provence 2011 (France), the North Aegean Music Festival 2014 (Greece) and the Fermata International Festival 2015 (Russia).