Prima donna of the Kyiv opera will soon make her Dreams come true
Soloist of the National Opera of Ukraine Iryna Semenenko is well known to Kyiv audiences. She graduated from vocal department of the Kyiv Gliyer Music College (Nina Akopova’s class) and National Music Academy of Ukraine (Natalia Zakharchenko’s class). Her repertoire includes sixteen leading opera parts. Her debut as professional singer took place in 1990 as Lisetta in The Secret Marriage by Cimarosa. The singer also issued a CD, Come Prima . She has performed on virtually every continent (except for Australia and Antarctic), drives a car, and is good with computers.
As a child, Iryna painstakingly learned to play the piano. Her wish to become a singer formed under the influence of a film featuring Mario Lanza. However, when the future singer, then five-grader, first listened to an opera (it was Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina ), she fell asleep.
Iryna made her debut on the stage of the Kyiv Conservatory Opera Studio as Liza Brichkina in Kirill Molchanov’s The Sunrises Are Quite Here . At that time an all-Ukrainian contest of opera studios was held. A day before the performance, director Heorhy Streletsky unexpectedly announced, “We decided to stage the whole opera instead of a fragment, and there will be no rehearsal with the orchestra.” One can imagine how nervous the then first year student was. Iryna spent the whole night studying the score. She was to sing twice as much as she expected without any additional rehearsals; including the most sophisticated scene of Liza’s death when she drowns in the swamp. When next evening Iryna appeared onstage, it seemed to her she became deaf and didn’t hear the music. All she could see was conductor’s hand, thanks to which she was able to perform successfully the whole opera. The students’ work was highly appreciated by the jury who awarded it the first place. The extreme debut was a true shock for the singer. After it she lost her voice for a whole week. However, soon she got used to not only appearing on stage but singing without rehearsals with the orchestra.
Few know how complicated Iryna got one of her favorite parts, Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata . At first they told her that by tradition in the Kyiv Opera this part is performed only by coloratura sopranos. Semenenko sang Violetta for the first time three years ago in Baku. She received a notice only three months before her debut. She had to study mise en scenes in Kyiv under the support of director Valentyna Reka. Iryna went to Baku accompanied by tenor Oleksandr Dyachenko. Kyiv artists received a hearty welcome there, but they were warned that there was no prompter in the theater. In the final scene Iryna felt that she had forgotten the Italian text. What was she to do? Her colleagues rescued her, prompting her the text themselves.
Iryna Semenenko is fairly believed to be an unmatched Cio- Cio-San. In the Kyiv version of Madama Butterfly the heroine commits hara-kiri behind a folding screen. The audience can see only her white scarf slipping down the screen. Iryna believed this interpretation unconvincing. Cio-Cio-San is at home, her suicide is a certain challenge — a response to Pinkerton. For five years Iryna tried to persuade the director to change this mise en scene. After death of Iryna Molostova, the play was handed over to Valentyna Reka. Iryna brought herself to a daring experiment. In the final scene she went out of the screen and stabbed herself sitting in the proscenium, her back to the audience. Of course, she had to warn her partner, Andriy Romanenko, about her decision. At the next performance she repeated her experiment, this time in the presence of the director. The latter was outraged. When the show was over Iryna had to listen to many reproaches and accusations of arbitrariness. However, when Iryna went to bow to the audience she was greeted with standing ovation. This mitigated the director’s rage, and in a few minutes Reka said, “We still have to work on the final scene.”
Once, performing Rigoletto on tour, a tenor suddenly forgot the text of the famous Gilda and Duke duet. Instead of singing, he stared wildly on Iryna, clutching her hands. She had to finish the duet alone, gently holding his hands to let him know that everything is fine.
In general, colleagues’ support onstage is a basis for the success for any performance. Sometimes Iryna turns her back to the audience and whispers to her partner, “You sing so well! You are so handsome! That high tone was good!” This takes a few seconds, and the spectators don’t hear anything, but any leading actor is inspired when listening to such words from his partner. Such support brings benefit to everybody, making the performance a true holiday for both the audience and the singers.
It’s an open secret that Semenenko also pays her tribute to non-academic genre. She performs songs from musicals and wouldn’t mind singing a folk song with a true folk “open” sound. She also took part in a number of videos and television concerts in a duet with Mykhailo Didyk.
What does Semenenko dream about today? Singing together with Elton John or Whitney Huston would make her happy. You think this is idle fancy? Who knows... The Opera’s prima donna is preparing a new solo concert titled Dreams and is going to perform in a rarely performed opera, Sister Angelica by Puccini.
