SÜDWEST PRESSE
A happy new year with Wagner
Theatre Ulm Soprano Maryna Zubko is Mimi in ‘La Bohème’ and now the soloist for the
New Year’s Concerts 2026. What does the future hold for her career?
She came to Ulm a good seven years ago, in the 2018/2019 season. One of her first roles was
Sophie Scholl in the chamber opera ‘Weiße Rose’ (White Rose). In an interview at the time, Maryna
Zubko recounted how she had been in Kiev when the student protests sparked the bloody
revolution against the Yanukovych regime on Independence Square. She had experienced everything
first-hand, as the National Music Academy of Ukraine is located right on the Maidan.
‘Sophie’s thoughts and feelings are very familiar to me,’ said the soprano, “the Maidan was also
about truth, justice and freedom.” The role brings back very emotional memories of the traumatic
events.
Then came nightmares of a completely different kind: Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022,
and Maryna Zubko feared for her family and friends, for her parents, who lived in Shostka in the
north-east of the country, near the Russian border. The city was surrounded by Russian forces and
under artillery fire. Her parents have since been evacuated and moved to Germany. Her brother
also lives here, working as a veterinarian in Vechta. Maryna Zubko recounts this with gratitude
and relief during a conversation at the Theatre Ulm, the day after the premiere of ‘La Bohème,’
in which she sang the acclaimed role of Mimi. She is tired, the singer admits, she couldn’t sleep
all night: too agitated, too euphoric. It’s understandable. ‘Puccini’s wonderful music!’ she enthuses.
nd this production with director Rolf Widder is a great gift, Kwonsoo Jeon, who plays Rodolfo,
is a ‘dream partner’.
Mimi in La Bohème? Maryna Zubko has also experienced significant artistic developments in recent
years: she began her career as a dramatic coloratura soprano with the Ulm ensemble, delivering an
outstanding performance as Lucia di Lammermoor on stage. However, she is now conquering the
lyrical repertoire. The initial spark came from Offenbach’s opera The Tales of Hoffmann, in which
she took on all four female roles and not only performed as the coloratura automaton Olympia at the
highest level, but also as the lyrical soprano Marguerite in the second act. The initial spark was
Offenbach’s opera ‘The Tales of Hoffmann,’ when she took on all four female roles and impressed
not only as the coloratura automaton Olympia in the highest register, but also as the melancholic
Antonia. The realisation: her voice has great potential in the middle register.
Maryna Zubko is an ambitious, determined artist who does not rest on her laurels, who plans her
career and continues to take lessons. Russian soprano Elena Pankratova, who has sung Ortrud and
Kundry at the Bayreuth Festival, is her coach: “Have confidence in your lyric repertoire, it’s a
healthy development for your voice,” was her advice. “I tackled the technical challenges with a
lot of self-confidence. The Desdemona in Verdi’s “Otello” was then the litmus test. Can I do it or
can’t I? It felt like a lottery. But I trusted my body.” And she won. And now Maryna Zubko is very
much looking forward to the role of Eva in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the farewell production
of artistic director Kay Metzger, which will premiere in early June 2026.”Eva has always been a
dream role for me, and it suits my voice perfectly, as if Wagner had composed it for me.”
Maryna Zubko will be performing Wagner at the 2026 New Year’s concerts at the Ulm Theatre:
with Elisabeth’s ‘Hallenarie’ from ‘Tannhäuser’. After the second performance of La Bohème, she
flew to Barcelona especially to rehearse this aria (‘Dich, teure Halle, grüß ich wieder’) with Elena
Pankratova, who is making her debut there at the Gran Teatro del Liceu as Isolde. Typically,
Maryna Zubko is a perfectionist. In the summer, the Ukrainian attended a language course in Siena
to prepare for the role of Mimi in Puccini’s opera and improve her Italian skills. And while she was
in Florence, she spent a lot of money in a haute couture shop on fabric for a dress she will wear at
the New Year’s concert. This is her second time as a soloist at the New Year’s Concerts at the
Theatre Ulm. She will also sing at the Theatre Ball on 14 February 2026: Sophie in a scene from
‘Der Rosenkavalier’. Wagner, Strauss – that’s the new Maryna Zubko.
She is very happy about her time in Ulm: “I put a lot of energy into it, Kay Metzger trusted me
and gave me big tasks and roles, and I seized the opportunities.” After this season, however, she is
leaving the theatre to embark on the next stage of her career. She is moving to Frankfurt am Main,
where her husband works as manager of the Frankfurt Symphony Orchestra. She does not yet have
a permanent engagement in mind; she wants to work freelance. Everything else will fall into place.
She always devotes herself one hundred per cent to her current task: on New Year’s Day, it’s Wagner’s
turn at the Theatre Ulm, but also light entertainment.
AUGSBURGER ALLGEMEINE
This year’s New Year’s Concert in Ulm is a farewell
The 2026 New Year’s Concert once again puts soprano Maryna Zubko in the spotlight, who will be
leaving the Ulm Theatre at the end of the season. After the New Year’s Concerts, the audience will
only have the opportunity to see her on stage in Ulm in Richard Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von
Nürnberg” from June onwards. For the New Year’s Concert, Maryna Zubko has planned a grand
entrance. A unique evening gown, tailored from silk from Florence in a shade of purple with gold,
has just been completed and is intended to underline what this New Year’s Concert means to the
Ukrainian-born soprano with German citizenship. She emphasises her gratitude to the Theatre Ulm,
where she performed on stage for eight years and played major opera roles such as Anna Bolena,
Lucia di Lammermoor, Maria Stuarda, Gilda and Desdemona.
After this season, she will work as a freelance artist and have her main residence with her husband
in the Frankfurt area. When asked how often she has had to sing and act out death on the Ulm stage
in various roles as young women – and always with such intensity that she even experienced phantom
pain in her neck during the scene where Anna Bolena dies on the scaffold – the soprano has to do the
maths: It must have been more than 320 times that she has had to die on the Ulm stage – Puccini’s
‘La Bohème’, where she sings the dying Mimi, premiered just before Christmas and runs until 8 February.
It is the wide range that Maryna Zubko displayed with great emotion in Ulm that will once again come
to the fore in this New Year’s concert: Wagner will be alluded to in “Dich, teure Halle grüß ich wieder‘
from ’Tannhäuser”, but also in the ‘Jewel Song’ by the young Margarethe from Gounod’s ‘Faust’, among
others. The second part will be all about love, from Franz Lehár’s ‘Liebe, du Himmel auf Erden’ to
‘The Phantom of the Opera’, mostly in the lighter muse. Maryna Zubko is not yet revealing what she
will be wearing for this . The orchestra will take a similar musical approach, with an equally wide range:
the audience will be entertained in the first part with Verdi and Puccini, among others, but also – as befits
a New Year’s concert – with Johann Strauss.
