Sarah Aristidou

The French soprano Sarah Aristidou is one of the most innovative artists of her generation. She has swiftly made a name for herself on both the opera stage and the concert platform, and has worked with conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, François-Xavier Roth, Trevor Pinnock and Simon Rattle.

As a specialist in contemporary music, she has performed numerous works composed for her, among them Aribert Reimann’s Cinq Fragments français de Rainer Maria Rilke and Jörg Widmann’s Labyrinth IV. She has also sung in the world premieres of Thomas Larcher’s Das Jagdgewehr at the Bregenz Festival and the Aldeburgh Festival and The Living Mountain at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and performed Abrahamsen’s let me tell you with the Philharmonie Zuidnederland and George Benjamin’s Mind of Winter with the Staatskapelle Berlin. She has appeared in Matthias Pintscher’s with lilies white with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer. In 2021 she made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in Morton Feldman’s Neither.

The focus of her 2023/24 season is György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, with new productions at the Vienna and Bavarian State Operas, along with concert performances of the same work with the Orchestre National de France and at the George Enescu Festival. She also appears in Transfiguré – 12 Vies de Schönberg with the Orchestre de Paris, sings the world premiere of Brett Dean’s Ich lausche und ich höre with the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin and appears in Benjamin’s Into the Little Hill at the Berlin State Opera. In addition, she appears as a guest with Jörg Widmann in the Berlin Philharmonic’s concert series Late Night, sings Bach’s St John Passion in Berlin and Paris with the RIAS Kammerchor and the Akademie für Alte Musik, and performs at the Salzburg Easter Festival with DJ Max Cooper.

In 2022 Sarah Aristidou became the first singer to be awarded the Belmont Prize for contemporary music and was nominated for the BBC Music Magazine Award for her debut album, ÆTHER. In autumn 2023 she released her two most recent albums: Enigma (Alpha Classics) and The Living Mountain (ECM).