Sandrine Piau

Sandrine Piau first built her standing through performances in Baroque repertoire, above all in Handel's operas such as Tamerlano and Xerxes. She soon moved into Mozart's stage works, earning notable successes as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Servilia in La Clemenza di Tito. Her interests did not remain confined to those eras; instead her programs came to embrace Brahms' Requiem, Massenet's Werther, Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, and further 19th- and 20th-century mainstays. One entry in her extensive discography is Adèle Hugo: Mélodies sur des poèmes de Victor Hugo.

She entered the world on June 5, 1965, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, a southwestern suburb of Paris. After studies at Collège Lamartine and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, she collected several prizes and distinctions for her interpretations of Baroque and additional repertoire, and she also developed skill on the harp. Her instrument is a compact yet flexible and appealing lyric-coloratura soprano whose range stays even and whose tone carries warmth. By the late 1980s her trajectory was rising, which soon brought invitations to concerts led by leading European conductors including Philippe Herreweghe, William Christie, Gustav Leonhardt, and René Jacobs. Regular appearances followed at major houses in France and elsewhere: Ismène in Mozart's Mitridate at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Pamina at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées, plus engagements at Covent Garden, the Amsterdam Opera, and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

Her recordings from the 1990s helped secure wider recognition. Two early successes under William Christie stand out: Handel's Messiah on Harmonia Mundi (1994) and Purcell's King Arthur on Erato (1995), both underscoring her command of Baroque music. In the following decades she added Zdenka in Strauss' Arabella and Nannetta in Verdi's Falstaff. Further releases from 2006 comprise Mozart's Mass in C minor led by Emmanuel Krivine, the Vivaldi program In furore, Laudate pueri e concerti sacri with Ottavio Dantone on Naïve, and Frank Martin's Le vin herbé under Daniel Reuss on Harmonia Mundi. In later years she worked with the French labels Alpha and Aparte, maintaining Baroque opera commitments while turning increasingly to recital discs such as Mozart's Desperate Heroines (2014) and Rivales, recorded with soprano Véronique Gens in 2022. Three separate projects appeared in 2024—the orchestral song program Reflet, the Baroque cantata collection Lucrezia with an ensemble of singers, and Adèle Hugo: Mélodies sur des poèmes de Victor Hugo—all issued on Alpha or Aparte. In 2006 the French government named her Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.