Biography of operatic soprano Olena Tokar

Olena Tokar opened the 2025/26 season with her acclaimed debuts as Elisabetta (Don Carlo) and Nannetta (Falstaff). In the coming season she will once again appear at the Opera Leipzig, where she has been a member of the ensemble since 2009/10 and is celebrated for her wide-ranging repertoire that spans from lyrical to youthful dramatic roles.

She began the 2024/25 season with the release of two world premiere recordings – Othmar Schoeck’s Lieder and Joachim Raff’s opera Samson.

Her most notable roles at Opera Leipzig include Rusalka (Rusalka), Violetta Valéry (La Traviata), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Gretel (Hänsel und Gretel), Mimì and Musetta (La Bohème), Marguerite (Faust), Liù (Turandot), Elisabetta (Don Carlo), Corinna (Il viaggio a Reims), and Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus).

As a concert soloist, Olena Tokar has appeared at the Gasteig Munich, Tonhalle Zurich, Stadtcasino Basel, Wigmore Hall London, the St. Petersburg State Philharmonic, the Schlosskirche Mannheim, the Prinzregententheater Munich, and the Federal Administrative Court Leipzig.
To mark the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth, she appeared at the Bayreuth Festival as Zemina in Die Feen. She also gained wide public recognition through her television appearance in “Stars of Tomorrow” alongside Rolando Villazón.

Olena Tokar is a prizewinner of numerous international competitions, including the ARD International Music Competition in Munich (First Prize), the International Boris Gmyria Competition in Kyiv (Grand Prix), the Lortzing Competition in Leipzig (First Prize), the Francisco Viñas Competition in Barcelona, and the BBC Singer of the World in Cardiff, where she was named one of the five best singers of 2013.

She was a participant in the Young Singers Project of the Salzburg Festival and is regularly featured in the BBC New Generation Project, for which she has recorded extensively.

Born in Ukraine, Olena Tokar received her musical education at the College of Arts and Culture in Luhansk, at the National Tchaikovsky Music Academy of Ukraine in Kyiv with Zinaida Buzina and Eugene Kolosova, and later at the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” Leipzig, where she completed her studies in the master class of Prof. Regina Werner-Dietrich.

She has received further artistic inspiration in masterclasses with Ileana Cotrubas, Christa Ludwig, Michael Schade, and Alfred Brendel, and in workshops with Irwin Gage, Olaf Bär, Piotr Beczała, and Matthias Goerne.