Lucile Richardot

Biography

Lucile Richardot began singing with the children’s choir Les Petits Chanteurs à la Croix de Lorraine in Épinal, and subsequently trained with the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris, then in early music at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris. In 2012 she founded her own ensemble, Tictactus, with two theorbist friends, Stéphanie Petibon and Olivier Labé.

In music ranging from medieval to contemporary, from the concert platform to the operatic stage, she sings regularly with Correspondances (Sébastien Daucé), Pygmalion (Raphaël Pichon), Les Arts Florissants (Paul Agnew), Pulcinella (Ophélie Gaillard) and Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien (François Lazarevitch), and has also appeared with Gérard Lesne, Patrick Cohën-Akénine, Rachid Safir and Solistes XXI, Václav Luks and Collegium 1704, Thibault Noally et Les Accents, Le Poème Harmonique, Les Paladins and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, among others.

She began appearing in major European venues in 2007, and in 2009 she created the role of First Aunt in the Philippe Boesmans opera Yvonne, Princesse de Bourgogne at the Opéra Garnier in Paris and the Theater an der Wien. A much sought-after alto soloist in oratorio, she sings as the guest of such leading international orchestras as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest and Tafelmusik in Toronto. She also devises sparkling recital programmes with the harpsichordists Jean-Luc Ho and Philippe Grisvard.

In 2018 she made debuts at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (Sorceress and Spirit) and at Carnegie Hall in Berlioz roles under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner, with whom she had first appeared in the three Monteverdi operas in 2017 (as Messaggiera, Penelope and Arnalta respectively) on an unprecedented European tour that was seen at La Fenice in Venice, among other venues. She worked with Gardiner again in 2019, playing the roles of Juno and Ino in Handel’s Semele, which marked another debut, this time at La Scala in Milan.

Lucile Richardot’s first solo disc, Perpetual Night with Ensemble Correspondances, was released by harmonia mundi in 2018. It received a host of international awards, including the Diapason d’Or of the Year in the ‘Baroque Vocal’ category, ‘Choc’ of the Year from Classica magazine, a ‘Diamant’ in Opéra Magazine, a Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for 2018, and the Caecilia Prize for 2019 from the Belgian Musical Press Union. Part of this programme was staged by Samuel Achache in the performance piece ‘Songs’.

In 2019 she further expanded her concert repertory with Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde in a version for chamber orchestra arranged by the Dutch conductor Reinbert de Leeuw, which she sang with Het Collectief at the Saintes Festival before recording it for the Alpha label the following year.

Returning to harmonia mundi, in 2021 she recorded the disc Berio To Sing with Les Cris de Paris under Geoffroy Jourdain and Stabat Mater settings by Pergolesi and Rossell with the German Ensemble Resonanz conducted by Riccardo Minasi. She launched 2023 with a complete recording of the songs of Nadia and Lili Boulanger, accompanied by the Franco-American pianist Anne de Fornel, a three-disc set also featuring dazzling contributions from the baritone Stéphane Degout and the soprano Raquel Camarinha. Alongside this, she released another solo disc with the harpsichordist Philippe Grisvard, devoted to chamber cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti.

In 2021 she gave her first performances as Geneviève in two different productions of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, first in Rouen and then at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with François-Xavier Roth’s Les Siècles, both staged by Eric Ruf. In 2022 it was the turn of Queen Gertrude in Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet, a role she took on at short notice for the revival of Cyril Teste’s staging at the Opéra Comique, conducted by Louis Langrée; this was followed by Cornelia in Handel’s Giulio Cesare conducted by Philippe Jaroussky, Britten (Hippolyta, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) in Rouen, then Poulenc (Les Mamelles de Tirésias) and Stravinsky (Le Rossignol) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 2023, and the title role in Desmarest’s Circé at the Boston Early Music Festival. Finally, she will be a more tongue-in-cheek sorceress as Medea in the new vaudeville show Médée et Jason, devised by the ensemble Les Surprises and the director Pierre Lebon.

All this between two lieder recitals with the pianist Adam Laloum, and two new programmes with Correspondances, of course! Among the new opera productions to come in the autumn of 2023 is Charpentier’s David et Jonathas, in the promising role of La Pythonisse (the Witch of Endor).