Andrei Bondarenko

Andrei has won the 2011 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition song prize, was awarded a diploma at the Ukrainian competition "New Ukrainian Voices" and won first prize at the international vocal competition "Art in the 21st
Century" in Vorzel (Ukraine). He was a prize-winner at the 2006 International Rimsky-Korsakov vocal competition in St. Petersburg, the 2008 all-Russian Nadezhda Obuhova Young Vocalists´ Festival and Competition and the 7th International Stanisław Moniuszko Vocal Competition in 2010.

This season Andrei will sing the count in Le Nozze di Figaro at Perm Opera which will get recorded by the Sony Classics label. He will sing Yeletzky in Pique Dame with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy and record Rachmaninov songs together with Iain Burnside at the Queens Hall in Edinburgh on the Delphian Label. Andrei will continue his relationship with Gary Matthewman after their successful collaboration
at Carnegie Hall, giving recitals in England and Italy.

Andrei made his North American debut singing a solo recital in Carnegie Hall, New York (Weill Hall), he had his role debut as Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande at the Mariinsky Theatre under the baton of Valery Gergiev, his Glyndebourne touring Opera debut as Malatesta in Don Pasquale (conducted by Enrique Mazzola)and will returned in summer 2012 to the Glyndebourne Festival Opera to sing his first Marcello in la Bohème (conducted by Kirill Karabits). Future seasons include the title role in Onegin at Glyndebourne Festival Opera as well as Cologne Opera.

He sang in a new theatre/opera project by Michael Sturminger “The Giacomo Variations” alongside John Malkovich and has toured with Larissa Gergieva in France, Switzerland, England and Scotland. Andrei took part in the Salzburg Festival Young Singers Project, where he worked intensively with Michael Schade and received Masterclasses with Christa Ludwig, Marjana Lipovšek and Thomas Quasthoff. In 2010 he returned to the Festival to take part in the production of Gounod Roméo et Juliette under the baton of Yannik Nézet-Seguin. This year the Salzburg Festival invited him to sing the emperor in Le rossignol with Ivor Bolton and the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg.

Andrei will also continue his principal contract as a member of the Mariinsky Theatre Academy of Young Singers in St. Petersburg where he already gave debuts in leading roles (i.e. Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte, Conte in Le nozze di Figaro, Papageno in Die Zauberflöte and Harlequin in Ariadne auf Naxos).

Andrei was born in 1987 in Kamenez-Podolsky, Ukraine. Since 2007 he has been is soloist of the Mariinsky Academy of Young Singers. In 2003 he entered the vocal department of the National Tchaikovsky Academy of Music in Kiev, Ukraine and in 2004 was admitted to the vocal department of the Kiev Conservatory. Andrei was then a soloist of the Ukraine National Philharmonic Society.