François Piolino

After finishing his vocal studies at the Lausanne conservatory and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, François Piolino, Swiss tenor born in Basel, achieved first prize at the National Superior Conservatory in Paris.  His long time vocal teacher is Parisian tenor Guy Flechter.

Starting with baroque music, predominantly with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, his career lead naturally to the opera : specializing in character roles, he toured France and Europe, performing on the most prominent stages: Bastille, Garnier, Châtelet, Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Lyon, Nancy, Strasbourg, Aix-en-Provence, Geneva, Opéra Royal de Wallonie, Staatsoper Berlin, Amsterdam, Glyndebourne, la Monnaie, Royal Opera House Covent Garden…

He worked 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 among others.

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), not forgetting Billy Budd's Novice.

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 from France to Japan.

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 sang Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées and in Nantes, Salome, Carmen, The Merry Widow, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges, Zauberflöte, Trompe la Mort by Luca Francesconi and Don Carlos 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 and Ariadne auf Naxos in Glyndebourne, Dialogues des Carmélites and Maître Peronilla 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 and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Werther and Carmen at Covent Garden, Geneviève de Brabant in Nancy, Traviata at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse, Ariadne auf Naxos in Lausanne, Les Contes d’Hoffmann in Brussels, Maître Péronilla d’Offenbach at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Eugène Oneguine  in Rouen, Fervaal at the Festival de Radio-France, Berlioz’s Te Deumwith the Orquestra Sinfonica y Coro RTVE, La Chauve-souris in Avignon, Le Nozze di Figaro in Lausanne and Dialogues des Carmélites at the Opernhaus Zürich, Le Nozze di Figaro and Les Mamelles de Tirésias in Glyndebourne,

Among his recent and future projects: Die Fledermaus in Rennes, Nantes, Angers and Toulon, Les Contes d’Hoffmann at La Scala di Milano, in Hamburg and in Venice, L’Heure espagnole with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, Der Rosenkavalier at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Eugène Oneguine at the Opéra National de Lorraine.

February 2024