Filipa Portela, Portuguese soprano, born in Avis, completed her studies in 2018. She began her training at the University of Aveiro under the tutelage of Isabel Alcobia and completed her degree and master’s degree at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland under the tutelage of Helen Lawson.
In July 2017 she won 1st prize at the 19th Estoril Interpretation Competition and the Public Prize ex-aequo. Since then she has performed solo in several festivals, Cistermúsica, Festoril, Póvoa do Varzim International Classical Music Festival and the Festival ao Largo, she has participated in concerts, as a soloist, with the Chamber Orchestra of Cascais and Oeiras and the Philharmonia Orchestra of Beiras.
As a freelance singer, she develops her own projects. She directs a collective that develops opera productions, Open Bodies for Opera, with which she participated in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019 with a performance directed and sung by her, “La Voix Humaine” by F. Poulenc. During 2020, she invited 3 composers to compose a collection of songs based on the Portuguese Letters of Mariana de Alcoforado, a project funded and supported by DGArtes, Portugal. Since 2021 she has been participating in the Contemporary Music concert series “Neues bei Grieg” in Leipzig at the Grieg Begegnungstätte. In March this year, she presents again the production of “La Voix Humaine” in Leipzig, with the support of Neustart Kultur. In July, she will be performing with the Orchestra Gulbenkian in Lisbon.
Filipa has a rich background in many different kinds of art, like dance (lindy hop, flamenco) and theatre (commedia dell’arte, improvisation, clown, amongst others) and drawing. During her studies, Filipa worked with the group of professional comedians and actors who go to hospitals as Doctor Clowns, through Operação Nariz Vermelho, in Portugal.
