Makvala Kasrashvili was born in town of Kutaisi (Georgia).
In 1966, she completed her studies at the Tbilisi Conservatory (Vera Davydova’s class). In the same year, she made her debut at the Bolshoi Theatre.
Her repertoire at the Bolshoi includes: Micaela (Bizet’s Carmen), Countess Rosina (The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart), Tatiana Larina (Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin), Marguerite (Gounod’s Faust), Natasha Rostova (Prokofiev’s War and Peace), Floria Tosca (Puccini’s Tosca), Leonora (Verdi’s Il Trovatore), Iolanta (Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta), Donna Anna (Dargomyzhsky’s The Stone Guest) Desdemona (Verdi’s Otello), Lisa (Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades), Amelia (Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera), Santuzza (Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana), Aida, Amneris (Verdi’s Aida), Turandot (Puccini’s Turandot), and others.
She also has an extensive concert repertoire, which includes romances by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Manuel de Falla, Russian and foreign spiritual music, a Petite messe solennelle by Rossini, Verdi’s Requiem, Te Deum by Bruckner, War Requiem by Benjamin Britten, Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony.
The singer’s international career took off with her triumphant debut, in 1979, at the Metropolitan Opera (as Tatiana in Eugene Onegin). As a guest star, Makvala Kasrashvili has sung at the world’s leading opera houses: Royal Opera House in London, Hamburgische Staatsoper and Prague National Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, Vienna Staatsoper, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Finland National Opera, Opera Seattle and Washington National Opera, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Hungarian State Opera, Polish National Opera, State Academic Mariinsky Theatre.
She has collaborated with such distinguished conductors as Colin Davis, Nello Santi, Giuseppe Patan, Daniel Oren, Charles Dutoit, Neeme Järvi, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Michael Tilson Thomas, Evgeny Svetlanov, Yuri Temirkanov, and others.
Her stage partners were the famous singers Ruggero Raimondi, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Nikolai Gedda, Kiri Te Kanawa, Dolores Zadzhik, Thomas Allen and others.
In year 2000, she was appointed as Director of the Bolshoi Theatre Opera Company collectives. Currently, Makvala Kasrashvili is an assistant to the principal conductor – music director.
People’s Artist of the USSR, soloist of the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Russia.