After piano and violin lessons, Maria Portela Larisch was accepted into the children’s choir of the Theatre of La Monnaie at the age of eight. She soon received her first singing lessons from Eunice Arias before starting to study at the IMEP (Namur, Belgium) in 2015.

Having integrated the Choir Academy of La Monnaie (MM Academy) in 2016, Maria Portela Larisch has since then sung the roles of un’Apparizione in Verdi’s « Macbeth », un Pâtre in Fauré’s « Pénélope» as well as Mála Bystrouska in Janácek’s « Foxie ! The Cunning little Vixen».

This gave her the opportunity to work with conductors such as Michel Plasson, Antonello Macacorda, Alain Altinoglu, Paolo Carignani, Hervé Niquet, Ben Glassberg and stage directors such as Andrea Breth, Romeo Castellucci and Christophe Coppens.

Since 2018, Maria Portela Larisch has been studying at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, first with Prof. Christoph Prégardien and then with Prof. Kai Wessel. She has also developed a keen interest in improvisation with the mentorship of Michael Gees.

She is a member of Cantus Portugueses and co-founded the trio Gilu (soprano, violin and harp), with which she recorded her first solo CD in 2022. Thogether, they created the staged performance “Saudades of the Future”, for which they commissioned three composers to write on poems from Karoline von Günderrode, Emily Dickinson and Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger.

September 2023, she premiered the role of Hans in the opera “Gorgon” from the artist Marianna Simnett at the Berlin Art Week. In April 2024 she will premiere the role of Die Angst in Anna Korsun’s opera „Keine Angst. Sagte die Angst” commissioned by the Oper am Rhein.

She received the Richard Wagner Verband Köln Scholarship in 2019 and the first prize in duo with Jou-an Chen at the internal Lied Competition of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln in 2023. They were also selected to be part of the Dutch association Vrienden van het Lied in 2024.