Olga Schröder

Olga Schröder was a Russian mezzo-soprano and contralto who spent twenty years at the Mariinsky Theatre. Trained at the St Petersburg Theatre School under Vitelyaro and Ricci, she made her debut in 1863 as Vanya in A Life for the Tsar, and Serov wrote of her enchanting voice and evident vocation for the stage. She sang some thirty roles in twenty-six operas, among them Izyaslav in the first Rogneda and Xenia's Nurse in the first Boris Godunov, and left the stage in 1884. She was married to Eduard Nápravník, the Mariinsky's chief conductor, who conducted that Boris Godunov premiere.