RETURN

Roukas Maria Papagiannaki

Soloist, Soprano
She studied piano and solo singing at the Greek National Conservatoire under Rita Vourtsi and mezzo-soprano Lela Stamos-Kolasi, respectively. She took postgraduate studies in singing (opera, Lied and oratorio) at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music of the University of Tel Aviv, with soprano Tamar Rachum. She attended postgraduate seminars in opera and melodramatic art under Vienna State Opera solist Hilde Zadek in Locarno, Switzerland and Helena Caruso in Vienna. She also received further training in opera repertoire under Christa Maria Ziese (Leipzig Opera) and Dr. Peter Sommer, musical director of the National Theatre Mannheim. She appeared in several German opera houses, such as the Stadttheater Darmstad, Nationaltheater Mannheim, Theater Erfurt, Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Staatstheater Gera, Oper Frankfurt, as well as the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago and the Lyrical Theater of Cagliari (Sardinia). She studied choral conducting under Peter Sommer and Gustav Kuhn (then conductor of the Paris Opera). She has been a choir master and orchestra director in Germany and America: Dannstadt, St. Ilgken, Plankstadt-Schwetzingen, Frankfurt, Mannheim, Schifferstadt, Miami, etc. She teaches classical and contemporary song in Synchronon (Contemporary) Conservatory of Crete, where she conducts choirs (children and youth) and instrumental ensembles. She worked with the GNO twice, singing the roles of Dido [Dido and Aeneas] as part of a performance staged in cooperation between the Orchestra of Conservatories (Greek National Conservatoire and Hellenic Conservatory of Music and Arts) and the GNO (1994/95), and Fedora Romazov [Fedora] (1998/99).