Born in Salonika, Greece, mezzo-soprano Ilektra Platiopoulou began her vocal training at the Neo Conservatory in Salonika. In 2004, she was admitted to the Schola Cantorum in Basel, where she studied with Rosa Dominguez and Andreas Scholl. She received her master’s degree in early music in 2009, and the following year joined Marcel Boone’s class at the Basel Music Academy to further her technical skills and knowledge of the vocal repertoire. That same year, she was also a semi-finalist in the Cesti Competition in Innsbruck (Austria). With the support of the ENOA network of opera academies, she took part in the Polish National Opera academy residency (Warsaw) in May 2014, then in the Rossini residency at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon in October of the same year. She sang the part of Virtu in Claudio Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea at the Athens National Opera (conducted by M. Chryssikos, directed by A. Papadamaki), then the same year the roles of L’Amour and Phrygienne in Rameau’s Dardanus in Liverpool and Limerick (European Opera Center, conducted by L. Pillot, directed by B. Rozet).
She also sang the role of Elvida in Alessandro Scarlatti’s opera Penelope la Casta (conducted by Andrea Marcon, directed by Manfred Weiss). In 2013, she gave a recital of Manuel De Falla’s Chansons Espagnoles with the Basel National Orchestra, followed by a month-long tour of Japan as a soloist.
The year 2014 was a very important one for her young career, including her first title role (the Child) in Maurice Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges at the Basel National Opera. That same year she was also selected to sing the role of Lucilla (La Scala di Seta by Gioacchino Rossini) as part of the Rossini Residence at the prestigious Académie du Festival d’art lyrique d’Aix en Provence.
She is very interested in the links between traditional and learned music, and explores these relationships in the Greek repertoire of composers such as Theodorakis and Hadjidakis, and in early Gaelic music with the ensemble The Curious Bards.
