Jérôme Varnier

Following his studies at the Paris Opéra’s École d’Art Lyrique, the French bass Jérôme Varnier made his debut in 1991 as Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte) at the Opéra de Lyon, going on to become a member of the company’s ensemble for five seasons. His performances as Arkel (Pelléas et Mélisande) under Marc Minkowski at the Leipzig Opera marked the beginning of his international career. In the last 30 years he has interpreted more than ninety roles, among them Colline (La bohème), Marcel (Les Huguenots), Cardinal de Brogni (La Juive), Gounod’s Frère Laurent and Berlioz’s Père Laurence (Roméo et Juliette), Méphistophélès (Faust), Banco (Macbeth), Ramfis (Aida), Hérode in Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, Le Veilleur in Enescu’s Oedipe, Sirocco in Chabrier’s L’Étoile, Seneca (L’incoronazione di Poppea), Caronte (L’Orfeo), Nettuno (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria) and Pluton (Hippolyte et Aricie).

Jérôme Varnier has performed at numerous important opera houses and concert halls, including the Opéra, the Opéra Comique, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Philharmonie in Paris, in Budapest, Brussels, Ferrara, London, Manaus, Sydney, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Tokyo, at La Scala, Milan (L’Enfant et les sortilèges), the Theater an der Wien (Hamlet, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, Guillaume Tell) and at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. He has also appeared at numerous festivals, including in Aix-en-Provence, Montpellier, Munich, Kanazawa, Kuala Lumpur, Muscat, Turin, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Seville. Conductors with whom he has worked include Myung-Whun Chung, Peter Eötvös, Bernard Haitink, Armin Jordan, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Alain Altinoglu, Emmanuel Krivine, Antonio Pappano, Louis Langrée, Marc Minkowski, Marcello Viotti, François-Xavier Roth, Philippe Jordan, John Nelson, Charles Dutoit, Kazushi Ono and Simon Rattle.

Jérôme Varnier can be heard on several CD recordings. His most recent releases are Les Troyens, Pelléas et Mélisande, L’Orfeo, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and Philippe Boesmans’s On purge bébé!.