Indre Viskontas is a versatile and powerful performer,
equally at home in contemporary and classical opera. Her
stately presence and rich vocal colors 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. Last year, 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.
Miss Viskontas is also an avid performer of chamber music,
and a soloist with The Classical Revolution, whose mission
is to ‘bring chamber music back to the streets’. Most
recently, she performed the world premiere of Josh
Archibald-Seiffer's Wat vör shöön Vagel with the
Stanford New Ensemble under the baton of Martin Fraile.
Past performances include Mendelssohn's Opus 34 with
Allison Lovejoy, an improvisational opera called
Spontaneous Combustion by Jorge Molina for voice,
piano, percussion, and guitar, and Osvaldo Golijov’s Lua
Descolorida and How slow the wind for voice and
strings as part of the Mission Arts Performance Project. In
a previous MAPP honoring the art of Frida Kahlo and
co-sponsored by SFMoma, she performed her own original
composition based on the poetry of Rosalia de Castro. She
has had the pleasure of working with Mr. Golijov on Lua
Descolorida during the Banff Summer Arts Festival in
2007.
This past summer, Miss 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, Miss
Viskontas performed in the Accademia d'Amore baroque opera
workshop, which culminated in the performance of staged
opera scenes with period instruments in Seattle. 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 September. Upcoming performances include the lead in a
workshop premiere of Felsenfeld's The Bloody Chamber
in Berkeley this coming June and again in Brooklyn at the
Galapagos Art Center in July.
Based in San Francisco, Miss 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 25 original papers and chapters
related to the neural basis of memory and creativity. Indre
is currently shooting six episodes of a new television show
called Miracle Detectives which will air in January
of 2011.