Diana Ankudinova showed her jaw-dropping vocal range in her cover of Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” on Russian talent show ShowMaskGoOn. Her voice at the start of the performance sounds so low it’s hard to believe a woman can hit those notes, then she transitions to angelic high notes.
Her vocal control and range are just out of this world and the judges were blown away by her voice. Diana was only 18 years old at the time of the filming, which makes it all the more impressive. You can see her belt out the emotional performance in the video below, which has racked up 10 million views.
Diana’s amazing talent blossomed out of a very hard childhood. Her abusive mother abandoned her at the age of three with a broken collarbone at a bus stop in winter. After some time at an orphanage, she met Irina Ponik, who became her adopted mother. Perhaps unsurprisingly her speech had not developed properly and at age four a speech pathologist suggested she have singing lessons to improve her speech skills.
Her extraordinary and unique voice was recognized early on by the local head of a brass band in her adopted home city of Arsenyev. She regularly entered singing competitions as a child and this persistence paid off. She won numerous smaller competitions and then hit the big time with her appearance on the You Are Super! Russian talent show in 2018. You can hear her perform Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” on the show below at age 15.
Diana eventually won the 2018 series of You Are Super!, as well as winning the 2019 season, beating out a selection of past winners and finalists in this ‘super season’. Show judge Igor Krutoy promised her an apartment in Moscow so she could advance her musical studies in the capital. She subsequently entered the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts in Moscow and still lives in the apartment to this day.
Since her big break, Diana continued performing both domestically and internationally. In December 2020 she successfully crowd-funded her debut album D.A., reaching 236% of her funding goal by the end of the process in early 2021. Later that year she released the album, which featured nine of her original songs.
Diana showcased her unique voice on the ShowMaskGoOn televised series in 2021, where she performed “Can’t Help Falling in Love” as her debut on the show. She performed nine times on the show and, surprising no one, won the whole competition, 25 points ahead of the runner-up.
Her range was measured as D3 to A5 in 2017, and at a later measurement in 2021, it had broadened to C3 to B♭5. This identifies her vocal range as dramatic contralto, which is the deepest and most powerful female singing voice, as well as being one of the rarest. Diana’s vocal range extends down into the male vocal ranges tenor and baritone. You can hear this in her performance of “Can’t Help Falling in Love”, where in the opening section she begins in the high baritone range. If you want to see more from Diana Ankudinova, subscribe to their YouTube channel or follow her on Instagram.