Though surrounded by music and performing in a children's glee club from age eleven, Avdeyeva initially wanted to study architecture.

[2] She was a mezzo-soprano and quickly became a lead singer for those roles, performing as Spring in The Snow Maiden by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Martha in Khovanshchina by Modest Mussorgsky.

Avdeyeva excelled in the Rimsky-Korsakov roles of Ljubasha in The Tsar's Bride and Lel in The Snow Maiden and Carmen in the Georges Bizet opera of the same name.

[2] Some of her later roles included Princess in Tchaikovsky’s Enchantress, Konchakovna in Borodin’s Prince Igor, Akhrosimova in Prokofiev's War and Peace[1] and the Commissar in Kholminov’s Optimisticheskaya tragediya.

[4] In addition to her 30 years of live appearances with the Bolshoi, for four decades Avdeyeva recorded with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra, which was directed by her husband Yevgeny Svetlanov.