According to critics, lyric-dramatic soprano Zarina Abaeva is one of the most outstanding artists of her generation. Since 2012 she has been a soloist of the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre and since 2019 a guest soloist of the Moscow Novaya Opera Theatre. In 2019, she received widespread critical acclaim for her triumphant performance of the soprano part in Verdi's Requiem with the musicAeterna Orchestra under the direction of Teodor Currentzis.

She performed at such venues as the Paris Philharmonic, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Kölner Philharmonie, as well as at Chiesa di San Marco in Milan, where a television broadcast was recorded for the Mezzo and Medici TV channels. In the same year, Zarina was invited to the Lucerne Festival and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Later, she brilliantly performed with the Berliner Philharmoniker and made her debut in New York and Tokyo.

Among the bright productions with Zarina Abaeva there are Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (as the Virgin Mary) by Romeo Castellucci, Puccini's La Bohème (as Mimi) directed by Philipp Himmelmann in Baden-Baden, and Katerina Evangelatos's staging of The Tales of Hoffmann (as Antonia). She has performed under the musical direction of such outstanding conductors as Teodor Currentzis, Mikhail Pletnev, Antonio Pirolli, Pavel Kogan, Valentin Uryupin, Andres Mustonen, Michiyoshi Inoue, Daniel Oren, and Graeme Jenkins. Zarina's repertoire includes such roles as Butterfly (Madame Butterfly),Aida (Aida), Desdemona (Otello), Michaela (Carmen), Tatiana (Eugene Onegin), Iolanta (Iolanta), Maria (Mazeppa), Agnes Sorel (The Maid of Orleans), Sister Angelica (Sister Angelica), Katya (The Passenger), Blanche (Dialogues of the Carmelites), Gorislava (Ruslan and Lyudmila), Ninetta (Love for Three Oranges), Natasha (The Mermaid), Wally (Wally), Soprano in Stabat mater by Rossini, Soprano in Te Deum by Bruckner, Soprano in Symphony N^o14 by Chostakovich.

This season Zarina sang the Butterfly part in Madame Butterfly at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna under the baton of Daniel Oren. In the spring of 2023, she made her debut with great success in the role of Desdemona in Otello at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under the direction of Maestro Zubin Mehta.