Indre Viskontas is a versatile and powerful performer, equally at home in contemporary and classical opera. Her "bell-like timbre" and "winsome stage presence" are particularly suited for the leading noblewomen in operas from the 18th and 19th centuries, while her intellect, dramatic intensity, curiosity and nuanced acting add depth to contemporary operatic roles.

The Lithuanian-Canadian soprano has performed roles ranging from The Countess in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro to the title role in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. Operatic performance highlights include the role of Beth in Mark Adamo’s Little Women in a production that she co-produced at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Kate in John Estacio’s Frobisher co-commissioned by Calgary Opera and the Banff Summer Arts Festival, Heart's Desire in Arthur Sullivan's rarely-performed last opera, The Rose of Persia with The Lyric Theater of San Jose and Aurelia, in Purcell's Dioclesian. with San Francisco Cabaret Opera. Her performance as the Water Nymph in a new opera written by David Heuser which was based on one of Aesop's fables, called The Golden Ax, was selected as one of the top two performances at the ninth annual Fresh Voices festival of contemporary music in San Francisco. She also created the role of Irena in Patrick Dailly's Solidarity, the world-premiere of which was performed in Berkeley with the San Francisco Cabaret Opera in 2009. In 2010, she created the lead role of Dora in a workshop premiere of Felsenfeld's The Bloody Chamber at the Live Oak Theater in Berkeley, CA and the Galapagos Art Center in Brooklyn, NY, and was hailed as "the musical highlight of the evening" by the Opera Insider. Also in 2010, she created the role of Amelia in excerpts from Giancarlo Aquilanti’s opera Oxford Companions with the Stanford Orchestra in the Dinkelspiel Auditorium in Palo Alto, CA. At the forefront of the underground movement to revitalize classical music and bring opera to a wide audience, Indre founded the San Francisco chapter of Opera on Tap in the summer of 2011. A national organization designed to introduce opera to a broader audience, Opera on Tap produces accessible, contemporary and fun performances of operatic music in non-traditional venues such as cafes, art galleries and bars. Along with Katherine Gerber-Biswas, she manages the troupe and can be heard both as the host and as a soloist during monthly performances at Cafe Royale and elsewhere.

Dr. Viskontas is also an avid performer of chamber music, and co-founder of Vocallective, a consortium of singers and instrumentalists dedicated to the art of vocal chamber music. She is also a regular soloist with Classical Revolution. In March of 2011, she performed the West Coast premiere of Mohammed Fairouz’s Three Fragments of Ibn Khafajah at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She also performed the piece, in Arabic, at Joyce SoHo on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks during a marathon concert of music written after September 11th, 2001 by Manhattan-based composers. In February 2012, she performed the West Coast premiere of Fairouz’s Unwritten for voice and chamber orchestra, along with the world premiere of Giancarlo Aquilanti’s Filastrocche for voice, viola and piano, in Stanford University’s Campbell Recital Hall. In 2009, she premiered Josh Archibald-Seiffer's Wat vör shöön Vagel with the Stanford New Ensemble under the baton of Martin Fraile, in the same hall. Other notable performances this past year include Osvaldo Golijov’s Lua Descolorida and How slow the wind for voice and strings as part of the inaugural Alumni Showcase recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and music for voice and string quartet from the Victorian era at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. She has had the pleasure of working with Mr. Golijov on Lua Descolorida during the Banff Summer Arts Festival in 2007.

In 2009, Dr. Viskontas attended the Opera en Creation workshop for emerging professionals in opera at the world-reknowned festival in Aix-en-Provence. Designed to foster the production of new works in opera, this workshop brought together 12 directors, conductors and composers, who spent two weeks working on various projects. Following her sojourn in the south of France, Dr. Viskontas performed in the internationally-respected Accademia d'Amore baroque opera workshop, which culminated in the performance of staged opera scenes with period instruments in Seattle. She has performed as the soprano soloist in several oratorio works, including St.Cecilia’s Mass by Gounod in Toronto, Cleveland and Chicago, and the Christmas Oratorio by Saint-Saens, Magnificat by Vivaldi, and Rutter’s Gloria in San Francisco.

Based in San Francisco, Dr. Viskontas holds a Master of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toronto. She has published more than 35 original papers and chapters related to the neural basis of memory and creativity. For more information on her scientific endeavors, click on the ‘science’ tab at the top of this page. Indre is also the co-star in six episodes of a new television show called Miracle Detectives which aired in the winter of 2011 on The Oprah Winfrey Network, and co-host of the popular science podcast, Point of Inquiry. She joined the collegiate faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the fall of 2012.