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ARIADNE GREIF, praised for her "elastic and round high notes" (classiqueinfo), most recently sang the title role in the workshop of Aleksandra Vrebalov’s Mileva, an opera about Einstein's first wife. She starred as the title role in Ravel's L'enfant et les sortileges, Ivona in Jeff Myers' The Hunger Art, Lucy in Menotti's The Telephone, Sandmann in a concert version of Hänsel und Gretel, Phaedra in Christopher Park's new opera, Phaedra and Hippolytus, and the only female role, Madeline, in Debussy's unfinished opera La Chûte de la Maison Usher with the Opéra Français de New York.
For the summer of 2011, she was asked by Dawn Upshaw to be the first young singer in twenty years at Yellow Barn Festival in Vermont. Upshaw also invited her to perform at the 2011 Ojai Music Festival in California, where, Mark Swed wrote, "Greif, who sang an avant-garde piece by Georges Aperghis winningly, looks to be a boon to new music" (LA Times). In September she sang as a Britten-Pears Yong Artist in Aldeburgh, UK.
Ariadne made her major orchestral debut singing Witold Lutoslawski's Chantefleurs et Chantefables with the American Symphony Orchestra. After three semi-staged performances of the piece, she made her Jordan Hall debut in Boston in a performance of Matti Kovler's La Testa di Santa Caterina, a mini-mono-opera by Matti Kovler. In March she premiered The Jabberwocky, a new piece by her longtime collaborator Ryan Chase, which she is also recording this season for the debut album of the new music ensemble Contemporaneous, and in June she sang for the first time with the New York-based Pierrot ensemble Lunatics at Large. In the fall she gave two recitals, tackled Schubert's Winterreise and Kurtag's Kafka Fragments for the first time, and returned to Ensemble 212 in New York for a performance of Bach's Wedding Cantata.
Other recent projects included a shared recital of Barber's complete vocal works at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center; a shared recital of unaccompanied music with the avant garde's veteran champion, cellist Madeline Shapiro; a recital of Dadaist 20th century music; and a world premiere as Galileo in a piece by Erol Gurol for eight cellos, soprano, and choir to the heretical text of Galileo's Starry Messenger.
An avid champion of new music, in the 2008-2009 season she made her Carnegie Hall debut as part of the Upshaw-Golijov program, premiering pieces written for her by Elena Langer; gave the world premiere of Aaron Dai's Con Furia with the Chelsea Symphony; made her Fisher Center debut singing Ainu Dreams, new orchestral songs by Greg Armbruster; won the Bard Conservatory Concerto Competition singing Witold Lutoslawski's Chantefleurs et Chantefables; and premiered The Door, by Ryan Chase, with the Mannes Orchestra.
Ariadne founded Uncommon Temperament, a Manhattan-based baroque ensemble, with whom she has toured twice to Detroit, where they will return this season, created a traveling production of Bach's Coffee Cantata, thrown a birthday party for Telemann, and made her Poisson Rouge debut, hailed as "…accomplished and winning…" by the NY Times.
A California native, in her early career as a "boy soprano," she toured internationally with the Los Angeles Childrens Chorus, performed as "Sem" in Britten's Noye's Fludde, and, among other things, sang in the premiere of Tobias Picker's Fantastic Mr. Fox at the Los Angeles Opera under the baton of Peter Ash.
