Maira Milolidaki

soprano

A versatile and prominent soprano, Maira Milolidaki is an active performer offering a repertoire that ranges from baroque to modern. Her appearances in concerts and staged productions include the National Theater of Greece, the Greek National Opera, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome), the Teatro dal Verme (Milan), the Carnegie Hall (New York), the International Theater Festival AndriyivskyFest in Kiev, the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, the Jazz Club Half Note. As a recording artist, she collaborates with the avantgarde electronic sound designer Constantine Skourlis, creating experimental music for internationally acclaimed theatre and dance performances. Human voice as a unified whole is her inspirational motivation. Over the years of practice, she keeps moving across disciplines, developing embodied voice research through advanced artistic projects; as a member of the Music Theatre Company EUTOPIA, she uses the solid grounding of her classical training to explore the dialogue of the singing voice with various art forms, engaging with new ways to encourage vocal improvisation within contemporary performances.

Maira Milolidaki studied at the Athens Conservatoire (Diploma in classical singing).

As a scholar of the Onassis Foundation, she pursued her vocal studies in Milan, Italy, and in Rome with Renata Scotto as a member of the Opera Studio in the National Academy of Santa Cecilia. She has also studied theatre and the art of performance (Drama school Εmpros/Ergastiri and Attis Theater, the Acting Method of Theodoros Terzopoulos). As a debutante, she has participated in the international young artists program of the Aegean Opera under the artistic direction of the American baritone Sherrill Milnes.

Since then, she appears regularly on stage performing a wide repertoire ranging from baroque to contemporary music. She is a member of the Ensemble Canto Soave (their cd Vita Segreta, Musica Segreta, featuring works by women artists of the Renaissance and Baroque period, has been recently released by FM Records), which was created out of love for the beauty of the works composed for a female trio. The Ensemble has performed in most major Athenian venues (Megaron-The Athens Concert Hall, National Opera House, Olympia Theater) and live radio broadcasts. As a recording artist, she collaborates with the avant-garde electronic sound designer Constantine Skourlis, creating experimental music for internationally acclaimed theatre and dance performances, such as Don Quixote (by Res Ratio Network) and Richard II-Requiem for a King (directed by Marlene Kaminsky). Their latest collaboration includes the performance on the life of Hildegard von Bingen, Splendidissima Gemma (Megaron-the Athens Concert Hall, March 2020), the recording of the songs for the dance performance Free at Last (Theater Rotterdam, June 2019, Festival of Athens and Epidaurus, June 2021) and the album Eternal Recurrence, released by Bedouin Records.  

Her appearances in concerts and opera productions include the National Theater of Greece, the Greek National Opera, the Alternative Stage of the GNO, the Accademia di Santa Cecilia (Rome), the Teatro dal Verme (Milan), the Carnegie Hall (New York). She has performed major roles, such as Violetta (Verdi, La Traviata), Madga (Puccini, La Rondine), Gilda (Verdi, Rigoletto), Queen of the Night (Mozart, Die Zauberflöte), Micaela (Bizet, Carmen), Rosina (Rossini, Il barbiere di Siviglia), Céphise (Rameau, Pygmalion), Godmother (Viardot, Cendrillon) and Morgana (Handel, Alcina). She has collaborated in various concerts with the Academica Orchestra of Athens, the State Orchestra of Athens, the Symphony Orchestra of Cyprus, the City of Athens Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the Camerata, the brass quintet Melos Brass, the New Hellenic Quartet, the organist J. Geffert and the counter tenor Michael Chance, in Festivals in Greece and abroad.

She was the artistic director of the concert cycle A Museum made of Music (Museum of Cycladic Art, 2009/2011) and of the festival Music Tones (Beton 7, 2011/2015). 

Since 2008 she performs regularly with the pianist Titos Gouvelis, exploring the art song repertoire in its many periods and forms.  

In 2018 Subways Records released her personal cd with the art songs Grafomena by J. Valette.  

She participated in the movies Matriarchy (2013) and Canto si tu Cantas (2019) by film director N. Kornilios. In 2021-2022 she has sung the role of Diamanto in the historical premiere of the Greek opera Andronica by Alexander Grec in the fully orchestrated version performed in Olympia Theatre.

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