Julia Lezhneva is a Russian soprano noted for her coloratura singing. A graduate of the Gretchaninov Music School in 2004 and of the Moscow Conservatory in 2008, she received honors in voice and piano. She went on to study with Dennis O'Neill at the Cardiff International Academy of Voice, and attended master classes led by Richard Bonynge, Carlo Rizzi, John Fisher, Kiri Te Kanawa, Ileana Cotrubas, and Rebecca Evans. She has also participated in master classes with Elena Obratsovain, Alberto Zedda, and Thomas Quasthoff. Lezhneva has given performances in Russia and across Europe, as well as in Japan, and she gave her first performance at the 2010 Mozart Festival in Salzburg, performing the Great Mass in C minor with conductor Marc Minkowski. She has appeared with other conductors, including Giovanni Antonini, Alberto Zedda, Franz Welser-Möst, René Jacobs, and Fabio Biondi,and shared the stage with Plácido Domingo, Kiri Te Kanawa, Anna Netrebko, Renée Fleming, Natalie Dessay, Nathalie Stutzmann, among many others. Lezhneva's operatic roles include Fiordiligi in Mozart's Così fan tutte, Urbain in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots, and Asteria in Handel’s Tamerlano. She also has given recitals, singing art songs by Fauré, Berlioz, Debussy, Boulanger, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninov. Since 2011, Lezhneva has recorded on the Naïve label.