Rusalina Mochukova

Fifteen years separate Rusalina Mochukova's Carmen at the Sofia Opera in 2003 from her Turandot at the State Opera in Stara Zagora in April 2018 — Bizet at one end of a Bulgarian career, Puccini at the other. Born in 1979, Mochukova trained at the National Academy of Music in Sofia and has sung as a soloist of the State Opera in Stara Zagora since 2011. Her roles are drawn from Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini, Meyerbeer and living composers, and she has given chamber concerts, opera galas and cantata and oratorio programmes in Bulgaria, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and South Korea. Teaching runs beside the singing: as a vocal coach at the Klang Art studio in Vienna she met the Orff Schulwerk approach, which led to seven years of further study, two master's degrees and a specialisation in speech therapy and music therapy. She leads the Stara Zagora Opera's project for children with special educational needs, and in November 2023 that work brought her the Crystal Lyra award in the category of pedagogue.