Зоряна Кушплер

September 2000 brought Zoryana Kushpler first prize at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, after Lviv — the piano at home first, then the violin, and only from 1993 the voice, this last with her father, the baritone Igor Kushpler, at the city's conservatory — and after Hamburg, where she studied with Judith Beckmann and in master classes with Teresa Berganza, Renata Scotto and Kurt Moll. Bern engaged her from 2004 to 2006; from 2007 to 2020 the mezzo-soprano belonged to the ensemble of the Vienna State Opera, and she has been a guest there since, as she has at the Volksoper since 2008. Her roles gather around the Verdi and Bizet mezzo — Ulrica, Preziosilla, Maddalena, Carmen — with Suzuki, Giulietta and a Prince Orlofsky among them. She first sang with the Cleveland Orchestra in 2012 and at Carnegie Hall in 2014, and has worked with Seiji Ozawa, Franz Welser-Möst, Christian Thielemann and Semyon Bychkov. Since 2023 she has held a chair in singing at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. It was in Salzburg, in September 2025, that she appeared in Opera and the Ottoman Imagination — Along the Silk Road, a Festival Camerata programme staged by Mario Diaz, singing with Runye Zhou, Olaia Lamata, Mo Wan and Jiazi Zheng.