Antonida is an Oxford-based barrister and soprano currently studying Vocal & Operatic Performance with Cathy Benson at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, supported by a conservatoire scholarship. She was the 2018 winner of the Roy Harvey Memorial Cup for best opera or oratorio performance at the Oxford Music Festival, and at the RBC she won 2nd place in the Delius Society Prize and was finalist in the Edward Brookes Lieder Prize, Ashleyan Opera Prize, and Mario Lanza Opera Prize.
Antonida's upcoming roles are as the title character in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel (Orchestra Vox/The People's Opera, 2023) and the two roles of the Forester's Wife and the Owl in Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 2023). Other recent roles include the cover of Sarah Roberts in Stephen McNeff's Banished (Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, 2022), Mary Cui's A Feast in Time of Plague (Oxford Opera Society, 2021), and the Nanny in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (The People's Opera, 2019).
In addition, Antonida has also sung in chorus with the Oxford Opera Company (2018), New Chamber Opera (2017), Cavatina Opera (2018), and VOPERA’s award-winning virtual production of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges (2020).
As President of the Oxford Opera Society, Antonida has been producer on the Society’s 2019 production of Gluck’s Orfeo, 2021 filmed production of Cui's A Feast in Time of Plague, and its 2018 and 2020 productions of Opera Scenes Concerts. As part of her desire to broaden access to opera, she created the Pub Opera Nights in partnership with The Oxford Blue, where she regularly performs concerts of opera scenes. However, her focus has remained on performance, and she has sung in a number of the Society’s gala concerts. In the 2020 Opera Scenes, Antonida sang the roles of Elsa (Lohengrin), Wellgunde (Rheingold) and Tatiana (Eugene Onegin).
Originally from St Petersburg, Antonida has a personal interest in Russian music, and has worked as a Russian coach and prepared translations and transliterations for opera. She has given recitals of Russian romances and recorded a selection of early 20th century revolutionary Russian songs.
Aside from this, Antonida regularly appears as a recitalist and soloist in local choral concerts, her solo experience with oratorio including Schubert’s Das Paradies und die Peri (2019, Oxford University Chorus), Vivaldi’s Gloria (2017, NewChoir), and in Haydn’s Nelson Mass (2017), Mozart’s Coronation Mass (2015), Handel’s The Messiah (2013) and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (2011) with the choir of St Hilda’s College.
Antonida is keen to collaborate on all sorts of projects, and has, in addition to formal concert experience, performed at weddings, deputised for evensongs, made demo recordings for new operatic and song compositions, as well as voiceovers for podcasts and title voiceovers for a student radio station.