The Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki before joining the Vilar Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

She made her Covent Garden début in 2003 as Flora in Verdi’s La traviata, and sang Second Maid in Strauss’s Elektra and Third Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. In the 2003/4 season at Covent Garden she sang Suzuki in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, the Hostess in Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, Alisa in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and Bianca in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia.

In February 2003 she sang in Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in Manchester, and then sang the same work with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Daniele Gatti in the BBC Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, repeating the piece with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in 2005, in a season that brought appearances as the Third Lady in Die Zauberflöte and Emilia in Verdi’s Otello at the Bastille, Opera National in Paris, where the following season brings Suzuki in Madama Butterfly and Brangane in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, with Adalgisa in Bellini’s Norma at the Theater Saint Gallen and the Third Lady in a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte in Salzburg.