Maria Papaioannou was born in Limassol, Cyprus. She studied at the Greek Conservatory of Athens where she was awarded a Solo Singing Diploma, unanimously graded as excellent. She subsequently studied much of the soprano repertoire with the internationally acclaimed Greek baritone Vassilis Yiannoulakos.

Throughout her career she performed in numerous opera productions with the Maly Symphony Orchestra of Moscow, Okinawa Chamber Orchestra, the State Opera of Varna, Blagoevgrad, and Burgas in Bulgaria, the National Opera of Greece under stage director Michalis Cacoyiannis, and the Cyprus State Chanber Orchestra.

She was engaged at the State Opera of Bonn by its artistic director Gian Carlo del Monaco where she sang in a world-premiere production of the contemporary opera "Der Ewige Frieden" under conductor Dennis Russel Davies and stage director Jurgen Tanchina. This opera was later performed at the Festwochen festival in Vienna.

During the past years she has been performing at the Belgrade National Opera Theatre in various operas and concerts.

Over the years she gave a number of concerts and sang in different film and theatre productions that appeared on television and at selected cinematic venues in Cyprus and Europe. She was one of the pioneers for the promotion of operatic music in Cyprus, an effort that resulted in the foundation of the Cyprus Opera Society where she is the artistic directress. She has also served as a member of jury panels in different music schools of Cyprus for the evaluation of students' graduation exams.


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