Sergey Semishkur was born in Kirov, Russia and graduated from the Nizhny-Novgorod State Glinka Conservatory with degrees in choral conducting and voice. He has been a soloist of the Mariinsky Theatre since 2007, where his wide range of operatic repertoire spans from the Italian masters – Donizetti, Puccini, and Verdi – to the pillars of the Russian tradition in Borodin, Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, and Tchaikovsky. The artist also has bowed in the heroic French roles of Berlioz and Offenbach and as impassioned Bohemian protagonists in the operas of Janáček and Szymanowski.

The tenor has taken part in various opera festivals around the world, including festivals in Savonlinna and Mikkeli, Salzburg Festival, the Edinburgh Festival and the Red Sea Festival in Israel. Sergey has worked with an array of stage directors including Philipp Stölzl, Mariusz Treliński, and Graham Vick. He has sung under the batons of Mikhail Agrest, Philippe Auguin, Plácido Domingo, Valery Gergiev, Jan Latham-Koenig, Andris Nelsons, and Tugan Sokhiev.

On the concert stage, Sergey has toured the world and had given performances of Requiems by Berlioz, Mozart, Verdi, and Webber, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Les Noces, and The Bells of Rachmaninov. The singer frequently performs on tour, appearing at the world’s most prestigious concert venues, among them Carnegie Hall in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, the Barbican Centre in London, the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, the Opéra Bastille in Paris, the Teatro Real in Madrid and the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. He also enjoys musical relationships with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Chorus and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre, and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra.

Highlights of previous seasons include his Metropolitan Opera debut as Vladimir Igorevich in Borodin’s Prince Igor, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov and conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, and both Enée in Les Troyens and Lensky in Eugene Onegin with the Mariinsky Orchestra and Chorus in Vienna and Beijing respectively. In 2015, he sang the roles of the Young Gypsy in Aleko and Paolo in Francesca da Rimini, at the Théâtre La Monnaie in Brussels. In 2019, Sergey took part in a production of the Shostakovich opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, in Athens, performing the role of Sergey. He starts the 2023/2024 season with a revival of this production, directed by Fanny Ardant, at the Greek National Opera.

Sergey has also previously joined the Chorus and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre for a European concert tour in the title role of Oedipus Rex and appeared in Madama Butterfly at the Warsaw Opera, as well as in productions of Les contes d’Hoffmann, La bohème, and Eugene Onegin at the Mariinsky.  He bowed in the title role of Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini at the Salzburg Festival, directed by Philipp Stölzl, as well as in concert performances of Les Troyens with Gergiev and the Chorus and Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre and Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death with the Wiener Philharmoniker at the Salzburg Festival.  He also has sung Dvořák’s Requiem with James Conlon leading the Orchestre de Paris.

His extensive discography includes recordings of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, Shostakovich’s The Nose, the Berlioz Requiem, Wagner’s Das Rheingold, and Symphony No. 8 by Mahler all on the Mariinsky Label. The recording of The Nose received a Grammy nomination. Sergey Semishkur is also a prize-winner of the International Rimsky-Korsakov Competition, the International Lisitsian Competition, and the International Elena Obraztsova Competition.