PAPIAN
Soprano • People's Artist of Armenia
Hasmik Papian
The Yerevan-trained soprano whose Aida and Norma conquered the Met, Vienna, and the great houses of Europe — Armenia's operatic ambassador to the world.
The Yerevan-trained soprano whose Aida and Norma conquered the Met, Vienna, and the great houses of Europe — Armenia's operatic ambassador to the world.
Hasmik Papian, born in Yerevan in 1961, is Armenia's foremost operatic soprano of her generation — a singer whose Aida, Norma, and Tosca have graced the Metropolitan Opera, the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, and the great stages of Europe and America.
Trained first as a violinist at the Yerevan Conservatory before turning to voice, she rose through European houses in the 1990s to become one of the most sought-after dramatic sopranos of the 2000s, singing more than a hundred performances of Aida alone on the world's leading stages.
A People's Artist of Armenia, she has carried Armenian music alongside the standard repertoire — premiering and recording works by Armenian composers and singing for diaspora communities worldwide, a cultural ambassador in the truest sense.
From the violin section of Yerevan to the title role at the Met — Papian became the voice Armenia sent to the world's greatest stages.
— On an operatic ascentPapian stands in the lineage of great Armenian sopranos — proof that Yerevan's conservatory tradition produces world-class voices. For opera lovers she is a distinguished Aida; for Armenians she is a standard-bearer who never let the world forget where the voice came from.
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