Σοφία Θεοφάνους-Ματθαιουδάκη

Sofia Theofanous-Mattheoudaki is the daughter of the composer and professor at the State Conservatory of Thessaloniki, Vassilios Theofanous. She was born in Thessaloniki and took her first piano lessons from her father; she continued her musical education (piano and theory of music) at the State Conservatory in Thessaloniki. She is a graduate of the School of Political and Economic Sciences, University of Thessaloniki, and holds a certificate in French (C2) and in English (B2). She moved to Athens in 1974 where she has been living ever since. She worked for several years as a state employee in the financial sector but resigned in 1990. Given the absence of an opera theatre in Northern Greece, she decided, in collaboration with a group of young people, to work towards the dissemination of opera in the region. As a result, an association titled “Friends of Lyric Theatre of Northern Greece” (1993) came to be established and Mattheoudaki was elected to its Administrative Council as General Secretary. Renowned lyrical artists as well as distinguished members of society in Thessaloniki joined the association which was funded mainly by the organization “Cultural Capital of Europe 1997”; in May 1998, when the organization closed down, the operation of the association was discontinued. Between 1997 and 2015 she wrote music criticism for literary magazine Synchroni Skepsi and for the newspapers Adesmeftos Typos and Angelioforos. Since 1997 she has been collaborating with the daily newspaper Estia for which she writes reviews on a weekly basis. She has been the Bursar of the Union of Greek critics for Drama and Music since 2015.