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 : 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, Bob Wilson, Frencesca Zambello, Günter Krämer, Christoph Marthaler, etc… and sang under the direction of  conductors 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,  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 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 Ariadne auf Naxos in Lausanne, Carmen at the ROH, Traviata in Toulouse.