Ariadne Greif, praised for her “luminous, expressive voice,” “searing top notes,” and “dusky depths,” (NY Times), began her opera career as a ‘boy’ soprano in Los Angeles and with LA Children’s Chorus at the LA Opera, making an adult debut singing Lutoslawski’s Chantefleurs et Chantefables with the American Symphony Orchestra. She has starred in roles ranging from Therese/Tirésias in Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias, singing a “thoroughly commanding and effortless” run at the Aldeburgh Festival, and a “sassy” and “sparkling” Adina in The Elixir of Love with the Orlando Philharmonic, to Sappho in Atthis by Georg Friedrich Haas, which the New York Times called “a solo high-wire act for Ms. Greif,” “a vehicle for Ms. Greif’s raw, no-holds-barred performance,” and “one of the most searingly painful and revealing operatic performances in recent times.”
She gave performances with William Kentridge in the Oslo Opera House, The Luxembourg Philharmonic, Berkeley Cal Performances, and Performa in New York of the Dada masterpiece Ursonate, two projects of her own called Bird Party and Eleven Wild Geese commissioned by The Ultima Festival in Norway and performed at the Oslo Opera House, a film of Table Manners, by Sheree Clement, and a film of We Need To Talk, a new monodrama by Caroline Shaw and Anne Carson for Opera Philadelphia. She stepped in at the last minute at the Ojai Festival with AMOC*, singing a concert of orchestral music by Matt Aucoin and premiering a new opera by Doug Balliett. She performed a “soaring…spine-chilling” staged recital featuring music of Kaija Saariaho, Ryan Chase, and Shawn Jaeger in Australia with the Sydney Chamber Opera at the Resonant Bodies Festival (Sydney Arts Guide).
She has sung concerts, recitals, and chamber music across the US, in Canada, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East with collaborators including JACK Quartet, PUBLIQuartet, Brooklyn Rider, The Orlando Philharmonic, American Composers Orchestra, Gabe Kahane, Pekka Kuusisto, and The Knights, including over three hundred concerts on tour with Ensemble Mélange, and at venues including The Ojai Festival, Zurich Tonhalle, Park Avenue Armory, Carnegie Hall, Sydney Chamber Opera, The Sarasota Opera House, Little Island, and The Meidän Festival in Helsinki.
Recent highlights include Alyssa Weinberg’s monodrama Isola with Long Beach Opera, singing and dancing as Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls with Opera Saratoga, Nick Brooke’s Ten Transcendental Etudes at Mass MoCA, and a series of concerts in North America, Europe, and Australia with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, performing Schoenberg String Quartet No. 2 and Colin Jacobsen’s Chalk and Soot. She performed at the 2025 Lincoln Center Summer Festival at Alice Tully Hall with AMOC* in Doug Balliett’s opera Rome is Falling, and again, also at Lincoln Center Summer Festival in August with Brooklyn Rider in their Chalk and Soot program.
In 2025 she appeared on a new album with Raven Chacon and Present Music, as well as an album of Kate Soper’s opera The Romance of the Rose.
Ariadne has premiered upwards of thirty new operas and more than 150 new chamber works.
