POLINA PASZTIRCSAK (HUNGARY), SOPRANO

Polina Pasztircsak (Pastirchak) was born in 1982 in Budapest. From an early age she was involved in music. When she was 19 she started her singing studies with Julia Bikfalvy, and in 2005 she became a pupil of Mirella Freni in Centro Universale del Belcanto in Vignola, Italy. Parallel to her musical studies she got a degree in cultural management at the University of West Hungary. She has a scholarship of the Italian state and support from several Hungarian foundations for obtaining her master’s degree at Conservatorio in Ferrara in 2010. Polina improved her opera and concert repertoire with Adrienne Csengery, Bernadett Wiedemann, Carol Richardson-Smith, Edda Moser, and Evgeny Nesterenko.

She made her operatic debut in 2007 at the Teatro Comunale di Modena in a premier performance of a contemporary opera by Lorenzo Ferrero. In 2009 she sang the role of Micaela in “Carmen”, and her first operatic performance in Hungary was the role of Mimi in the National Theater of Szeged. Presently, she is recording a portrait CD, while Hungarian Radio has recorded her lieder of Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Haydn, Kodaly, and Schubert.

In 2004, she won the Simandy Jozsef Hungarian National Singing Competition in Szeged, and in 2007 became a semi-finalist of the Renata Tebaldi International Singing Competition in San Marino. In November 2009, she won the First Prize as well as the Audience Prize, the prize of the Grand Theatre de Geneve, and the prize of Coup Breguet at the Geneva International Music Competition.

Polina Pasztircsak performed at the Musical Olympus Festival in St. Petersburg in 2010.

VIEW A VIDEO of Polina Pasztircsak
performing Georg Friedrich Handel's "Mi restano le lagrime" from Alcina, at the Concourse de Geneve, 2009
Mi restano le lagrime from Alcina