Sivan Eldar

The work of composer Sivan Eldar, born in Tel Aviv in 1985, is characterised by a finely spun dramaturgy, often developed in transdisciplinary collaboration with partners from a wide range of arts, and by the creative and sensitive use of technological and musical resources. It includes concert pieces from solo to orchestral, scenic works and sound installations.

Sivan Eldar’s latest music theatre work premiered at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2025 and was acclaimed by the press and audiences alike. The Nine Jewelled Deer emerged from her collaboration with the singer and improviser Ganavya Doraiswamy, in partnership with co-librettist Lauren Groff, and was directed by Peter Sellars with set design by the American painter Julie Mehretu. The result was described as “transporting and universal” (Opera Magazine), “deeply affecting” (Neue Zürcher Zeitung) and “breathtaking” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). Shortly afterwards, her first full-length chamber opera, Like Flesh – which had premiered to great acclaim at the Opéra de Lille in 2022 – was staged in a new production. The opera, based on a libretto by the playwright Cordelia Lynn and winner of the FEDORA Opera Prize, was shown in Basel in autumn 2025; a media package comprising a book and CD was released in the run-up to the production. Sivan Eldar is currently working on her third opera.

Sivan Eldar took piano and singing lessons as a child and went to the experimental United World College in New Mexico at the age of 15. She continued her studies in Boston at the New England Conservatory in composition, piano and ethnomusicology. In 2009, she moved to California, where she earned a PhD in composition from the University of California at Berkeley with Franck Bedrossian, Edmund Campion, Cindy Cox and Myra Melford, as well as a diploma in new media. She then studied at IRCAM in Paris with Hèctor Parra. From 2018, she was in residence at IRCAM and worked in particular with computer music designer Augustin Muller and researcher Jean-Louis Giavitto.

Sivan Eldar's music has been performed at many leading festivals and concert halls, including the Venice Biennale, the Musée du Louvre, the Boston Symphony Hall, the Théatre du Châtelet, the Centre Pompidou (Festival ManiFeste), the Maison de la Radio (Festival Présences), the Philharmonie Luxembourg (Rainy Days), the Musikverein Wien (Wien Modern), the DiMenna Center (TIME: SPANS Festival), the Ultraschall Festival Berlin, the November Music Festival Den Bosch and the opera houses of Lille, Montpellier, Nancy, Marseille and Antwerp. Her sound installations have been presented at the MahN Museum in Neuchâtel, the MUSEC Museum in Lugano, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Konfrontationen and Impuls festivals in Austria and the Catherine Clark Gallery in San Francisco.

In addition to her work as a composer, Sivan Eldar has been teaching as a professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music since 2025. Prior to this, she taught at the Department of Music at the University of California Berkeley and at the John Adams Young Composers Programme (2009-16), the IlSuono Academy (2023), the BE Connect Academy (2024) and the Voix Nouvelles Academy in Royaumont (2024). From 2019 to 2022, she was composer-in-residence at the Opéra Orchestre National de Montpellier, where she led several international workshops for composers, authors and directors, including ‘Paroles et musique’ with director Ted Huffman.

Sivan Eldar has been honoured with numerous scholarships and prizes: She was a scholar of the Fulbright Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the MacDowell Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, the Villa Albertine, the Cité Internationale des Arts, the Royaumont Foundation and Snape Maltings. She is a Rome Prize Laureate 2022/23 (French Academy in Rome - Villa Medici) and winner of the New Musical Talent Award (SACD) 2023 and the Opera America Discovery Grant 2024. Her music is published by Durand-Universal Music Classical.

2026/27 season

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