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François Piolino

About this Artist

After finishing his vocal studies at the Lausanne conservatory and at the London School of Guildhall, FRANÇOIS PIOLINO, Swiss tenor born in Basel, achieved first prize at the National Superior Conservatory in Paris. He has been singing for many years with the tenor Parisian Guy Flechter.

His career which started with baroque music, predominantly with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, has allowed him to acquire a solid foundation in order to continue his career, which lead him naturally to the opera. Specializing in character roles, he toured France and Europe, performing on the biggest stages: Bastille, Garnier, Châtelet, Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Lyon, Nancy, Strasbourg, Aix-en-Provence, Geneva, Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Staatsoper Berlin, Amsterdam, Glyndebourne...

He collaborated with numerous stage directors such as Robert Carsen, Graham Vick, Laurent Pelly, Olivier Py, Jean-François Sivadier, Mariame Clement Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, Bob Wilson, Jean-Louis Martinotti, Frencesca Zambello Günter Krämer Christoph Marthaler, etc… and sang under the direction of Michel Plasson, Yvan Fischer, Pinchas Steinberg, Bernhard Kontarsky, Lawrence Foster, Jérémie Rhorer, Charles Dutoit, Jeffrey Tate, Kazushi Ono, Philippe Jordan and Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Some of the roles he has taken on include: Don Basilio (Le Nozze di Figaro), Goro (Butterfly), Caius (Falstaff), Pang (Turandot), or Monsieur Triquet (Onegin), without forgetting Billy Budd's Novice, which was primarily shown at the Bastille.

Thanks to his perfect mastery of German, François Piolino is very comfortable with roles such as: Jews (Salomé), M.Taupe (Capriccio), Scaramuccio (Ariadne auf Naxos), Valzacchi (Rosenkavalier) or Monostatos (Zauberflöte), one of his favorite roles, that he's sung over 80 times, all over the world.

The French repertoire allows him to express himself in his maternal language: le Remendado (Carmen), Guillot de Morfontaine (Manon), Schmidt (Werther), les quatre valets from Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Torquemada (L’Heure espagnole) or l'Aumônier from Dialogues des Carmélites; but he is particularly fond of the three tenor roles of L'Enfant et les sortilèges (la théière, l'arithmétique and la rainette) that he sings on the most prestigious stages and under the baton of the greatest conductors.

Recently, he could have been heard in Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées and in Nantes, Salome, Carmen, la Veuve Joyeuse, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges and Zauberflöte at the Paris Opera, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges in Lyon, Rome, Glyndebourne, London, Stockholm, at the Paris Philharmonic and at the Auditorium of Radio France in Paris, in Munich, Cologne, Stuttgart, Lausanne, Geneva and Monte Carlo, Eugene Onegin in Glyndebourne, Dialogues des Carmélites at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Capriccio in Lyon and Brussels, L’Etoile (Tapioca) in Amsterdam and for his debuts at Covent Garden, Madama Butterfly in Lille, Reims and Luxemburg, Chérubin by Massenet in Montpellier, L’Heure Espagnole with the Boston Symphony, Werther at Covent Garden...

His future engagements are comprised of Geneviève de Brabant in Nancy, Trompe la Mort by Luca Francesconi at the Paris National Opera, Ariadne auf Naxos and Madama Butterfly in Glyndebourne, L’Heure Espagnole with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dialogues des Carmélites at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Carmen at Covent Garden...