Lenia Safiropoulou

Lenia is an opera and concert singer, poet and translator.

She has sung with Philharmonia Orchestra, Welsh National Opera Orchestra, Armonia Atenea, State Orchestra of Athens, Symphony Orchestra of Cyprus and other orchestras. She has collaborated with pianists and chamber music ensembles in the UK, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Greece. She has presented her own projects and participated in productions of the Greek National Opera, Greek Festival, Athens Concert Hall and Onassis Cultural Centre. In 2017, her personal album Sunless Loves, with works by Brahms, Prokofiev and Mussorgsky, was published by the British label First Hand Records.

Lenia has published two poetic books: Paternoster Square (Polis, Athens 2012, Prize “Anagnostis” 2013) and It is hard to stumble on stones (Patakis, Athens 2016, Prize “Woman of the Year” 2017). Poems from her second book have been translated into German and included in the anthology Kleine Tiere zum Schlachten (parasitenpresse, Κöln 2017). As singer and translator into Greek, she has published an anthology with poems by Goethe and Heine, accompanied by a CD with romantic art songs on the poems of the book (Patakis, Athens 2013). She has also translated the complete Shakespeare Sonnets (Gutenberg, Athens 2016) and Tsar Saltan by Pushkin (Patakis 2017). She translates from English, German, French and Russian.

Lenia studied singing, piano and Lied at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and opera at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, with scholarships by the Maria Callas and the Alexandros Onassis Foundations. She completed her studies at the National Opera Studio in London, supported by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and by Serena Fenwick.