Vil'gel'mina Raab
also Wilhelmina Raab, Vil'gel'mina Ivanovna Raab, Вильгельмина Ивановна Рааб, Bilik, Plyushchevskaya-Plyushchik
Birthplace: Austerlitz, Austrian Empire (now Slavkov u Brna, Czech Republic)
Vil'gel'mina Raab, born Bilik to a musician's family, studied the violin at the Prague and Vienna conservatories before turning to singing, and moved to St Petersburg in 1869, where she graduated from the conservatory under Nissen-Saloman. She was a soloist at the Mariinsky Theatre from 1871 until 1885, debuting as Mathilde in Guillaume Tell, and created Natal'ya in Tchaikovsky's Oprichnik, Tamara in Rubinstein's The Demon and Oxana in Vakula the Smith. Tchaikovsky dedicated a romance to her. She taught at the St Petersburg Conservatory from 1884 and was made a professor in 1901.
Creations
- Xenia — Boris Godunov (St Petersburg, 1874)
Written from
- Wikipedia (2026) Рааб, Вильгельмина Ивановна. (Accessed: 27 August 2026). The Russian article.
- Semeonoff, B. (1992) 'Raab [née Bilik], Vil'gel'mina Ivanovna', in Sadie, S. (ed.) The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. London: Macmillan Reference, vol. 3, p. 1207.