After finishing his vocal studies at the Lausanne conservatory and at the Guildhall School Scgool 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 : Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Opéra de Paris, Theatro alla Scala,  Staatsoper Berlin, Festival de  Glyndebourne, Amsterdam, la Monnaie (Bruxelles), Staatsoper Hamburg, Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Opéras National Lyon, Opéra National de Lorraine (Nancy) , Opéra National du Rhin ( Strasbourg),  Festival Aix-en-Provence, Genève,  , …

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He worked with numerous stage directors, such as Robert Carsen, Graham Vick, Laurent Pelly, Olivier Py, Jean-François Sivadier, Mariame Clement, Bob Wilson, Frencesca Zambello, Günter Krämer, Christoph Marthaler, Krzysztof Warlikowski etc… and sang under the direction of the most prominent conductors : Charles Dutoit, Jeffrey Tate, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Michel Plasson, Kent Nagano, Sir Mark Elder, John Elliot Gardiner, Michael Schønwandt or Philippe Jordan.

 

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,  in which he particularly shone at the Bastille.

Thanks to his perfect mastery of German, François Piolino is very comfortable with roles such as the  Jews (Salome), M.Taupe (Capriccio), Scaramuccio (Ariadne auf Naxos), Valzacchi (Rosenkavalier) or Monostatos (Magic Flute), one of his favorite parts, which he has sung more than 80 times, all over the world, from France to Japan.

The French repertoire allows him to express himself in his native language : le Remendado (Carmen), Guillot de Morfontaine (Manon), Schmidt (Werther), the four servants  and Spalanzani in Hoffmann's Tales, Torquemada (L’Heure espagnole) or l’Aumônier (Dialogues des Carmélites) ;  his favorite French roles are the three  characters  of  the Teapot, the Little Old Man (Arithmetics) and the Treefrog in  L’Enfant et les sortilèges, which he sings on the most prestigious stages and under the baton of the greatest conductors.

He performed in Salome, Carmen, The Merry WIdow, L’Enfant et les Sortilèges and The Magic Flute at the Paris Opera ; L’Enfant et les Sortilèges in Lyon, Rome, Glyndebourne, London, Stockholm, Paris Philharmonic, Stuttgart, Monte-Carlo,  Colone, Munich, Lausanne,  Geneva ;  Eugene Onegin in Glyndebourne and Liklle, Dialogues of the Carmelites at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées ; Capriccio in Lyon and Brussels ; L’Etoile in Amsterdam, Paris and London ; Madama Butterfly in Lille and Glyndebourne ;  L’Etoile and Werther at the ROH

Upcoming events include  Hoffmann's Tales à la Staatsoper Hamburg, a revival of Fledermaus in Toulon, Rennes, Nantes et Angers, before coming back to Glyndebourne for a new production of Carmen.