Laura Mamakos

Laura Mamakos is a classical singer with a rich lyric spinto voice.

Beyond her attraction to conventional repertoire and performance, she is often drawn towards creatively unconventional productions.

In her own projects and concerts Laura seeks out interesting collaborations and unusual venues as a means of exploring convergence and synthesis with other artists and their art forms, such as dance, visual art, video art, narration, etc. Her aim is to create a transportive experience for the audience through the music, the context and the texture of the performance.

Laura’s latest inspiration is her future project «Together Again», a cross-collaborative allegory lending a voice and a spotlight to the International Refugee Crisis through its archetypal parallels to the story of The Parthenon Sculptures.

Among other productions, notably in 2017 Laura performed One⏐Seven her own production and concept, one recital in seven languages with customised video mapping at the newly completed Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece. Previously in 2016 she presented «Nekroloulouda» (flowers for the dead), a collaboration with a story teller and a pianist, intertwining opera, poetry, myths, prose, and music for an enthralled audience.

She also interpreted the role of Donna Elvira in director Michael Travis Risner’s contemporary take on Mozart’s Don Giovanni for The Boulder Opera Company in Colorado, USA, but most recently in May 2017 she had her role debut as Nerone in Monteverdi’s L’ Incoronazione di Poppea with the Greek Opera Festival in Athens, Greece.

Laura is an international performer who has sung in Europe (Italy, Spain and Greece) and the USA either as a soloist or interpreting roles such as Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni (Mozart), Musetta in La Bohème (Puccini), Annina in La Traviata (Verdi), Frasquita in Carmen (Bizet), Susanna and Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro (Mozart).

She has been fortunate to work with conductors like Jorge Rúbio, Dante Mazzola, Tony Amato, David Barón, and Dino Anagnost; stage directors Giancarlo del Monaco, Dimitri Papaioannou, Angeliki Stellatou, Ricardo Campelo and Michael Travis Risner; coaches and voice teachers Juan Antonio Alvarez Parejo, Ana Luisa Chova, Aris Christofellis, Dimitris Yiakas, Barbara Gavakou, Christina Giannakopoulou, Yiannis Aeriniotis, Yiannis Tsanakaliotis, Marcy Lindheimer, Julie Christie, Cesare Rufini, Christa Ludwig, and Fedora Barbieri.

Laura was born and raised in San Francisco and currently lives in Athens, Greece. She has also lived in Italy, Spain and New York. She studied music and piano at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and her Diploma in Voice is from Kodály Conservatory in Athens, Greece.

She holds a BA in French and Italian Language and Literature from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MA in International Relations from NYU (awarded a US government scholarship).

Laura is also the President and Co-founder of DionysiaTrust, a non profit in support of the arts, and often performs pro bono for worthwhile causes, such as the Lifeline charity in New York where she was invitied to sing by the Crown Princess Catherine of Serbia.