CV / Biography
Iris Skolidi is a Greek stage director, soprano, and architect based in Amsterdam. Her work unfolds where voice meets space, developing opera as a spatial, physical, and social experience. With a background in architecture and classical voice, and as a graduate of the Conservatory of Amsterdam’s Master’s in Musical Leadership, she creates interdisciplinary productions that integrate voice, body, and spatial thinking. Her projects — including Orfeo ed Euridice (2023), Opera Bizarre (2023), Reimagining Water (2023), and Imaginations (2023) — balance musical tradition with experimental staging and educational engagement.
She collaborates as performer and maker with institutions such as World Opera Lab, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ, Splendor Amsterdam, CREA, Athens-Epidaurus Festival, Greek National Theater and Greek National Opera.
She also works with Dutch National Opera as Assistant Stage Director, contributing to large-scale operatic productions while continuing to craft her own works that position the operatic voice as a medium for connection, participation, and contemporary reflection.
Music
Iris holds a Master’s in Musical Leadership from the Conservatory of Amsterdam (2024), a hybrid program combining project management, musical creation, and socio-cultural context. Her thesis, “From Singing to Belonging: Voice as a Vehicle to Forge Communities”, investigated the relationship between voice, body, language, emotion, and memory. Implementing this theory, she developed the notion and practice of Educative Performance, a method for vocal education through multimodal workshops incorporating drawings and movement.
A lyrical soprano, Iris studied with Fotini Kostopoulos and holds a diploma in Monody from the Orfeio Conservatory of Athens. She is also a graduate singer from the Center for Early Music of Athens Conservatoire (2022). Since 2017, she has been a member of the Renaissance Choir Capella Sancti Pauli, directed by Iason Marmaras. She has performed with early music ensemble Ex Silentio under Dimitris Kountouras, in institutions such as the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera, Megaron Athens Concert Hall, Sacred Music Festival, and Mykonos Art Festival. She completed her early music studies at the Conservatory of Amsterdam with soprano Valeria Mignaco.
Architecture
Iris holds a diploma in Architecture Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (2019) and studied Architecture in Italy at Università di Napoli Federico II on an Erasmus+ Scholarship. She graduated with honors after designing Spatio Vibratum, an acoustic shell for operatic performances in ancient theaters.
Since 2017, she has worked as an assistant set designer for large-scale theater productions at the National Theater of Greece, Poreia Theater, and Athens-Epidaurus Festival. She has also collaborated on exhibition and museum design projects in Italy (Mostra di San Severo al Pendino, Studio La Nova Architetti) and Greece (Mikis Theodorakis Exhibition, Athens Megaron Concert Hall, The Office Architecture Studio).
Master Classes / Workshops / Seminars
Believing in a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, Iris has participated in masterclasses with renowned musicians such as Michael Chance, Jill Feldman, Dimitri Kavakos, and Dimitri Tiliakos. She attended summer schools, including the Siena Early Music Academy and Villa Pennisi in Musica, an architecture-acoustics laboratory in Sicily, on scholarship.
She graduated from the Set Design Laboratory at the National Greek Theater, where she created a scenography proposal for Ibsen’s Dollhouse. Most recently, she attended the 6th SIMM – Social Impact of Making Music Symposium in Barcelona, presenting her research and practice on alternative opera approaches.
Volunteering
In 2021, Iris co-founded Open Orchestra, an inclusive, activist initiative of over 150 artists, promoting participatory music-making in public spaces in Athens. She co-managed and co-conducted the choir, which became a symbol of contemporary social matters in Greece, including the MeToo movement.
Languages
Iris is fluent in Greek, French, Italian, English, and Dutch.
She has strong organizational and communication skills across multiple languages.