Lucile Richardot

The French mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot began her career as a journalist, before deciding to focus on singing. She studied at the Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris and at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Paris, and has gone on to become one of the most sought-after singers in her voice type. In 2025 she was named ‘Opera Singer of the Year’ at the Victoires de la Musique.

She works regularly with renowned ensembles, including Il Seminario Musicale, Le Poème Harmonique, Les Paladins, the Solistes XXI, the Ensemble intercontemporain, Collegium 1704, Het Collectief, Il Giardino Armonico, The English Concert, Le Concert de la Loge, the Ensemble Pygmalion, Les Accents, Les Surprises, Faenza, the Orchestre National de France, the Ensemble Correspondances, Les Arts Florissants, the Pulcinella Orchestra, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien and Acte 6, and with conductors including John Eliot Gardiner, François-Xavier Roth, Louis Langrée, Reinbert de Leeuw, Susanna Mälkki, Paul Agnew, Philippe Jaroussky, Raphaël Pichon and Sébastien Daucé.

She has devised a series of impressive concert programmes with the harpsichordists Jean-Luc Ho and Philippe Grisvard and with the pianists Anne de Fornel and Adam Laloum.

Guest engagements have taken her to the Opéra de Rouen, the Théâtre de Caen, the Opéra Comique and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, to the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Carnegie Hall in New York and La Scala, Milan, and to Rotterdam, London, Liverpool, Amsterdam, Prague, Hamburg, Wrocław, Madrid, Boston and Toronto.

Roles which she has performed onstage include Messaggera (L’Orfeo), Penelope (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria), Arnalta (L’incoronazione di Poppea), Juno and Ino (Semele), Sorceress and Spirit (Dido and Aeneas), Cornelia (Giulio Cesare), the title role of Desmarest’s Circé, Goffredo (Rinaldo), La Pythonisse in Charpentier’s David et Jonathas, Geneviève (Pelléas et Mélisande), Gertrude in Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet and Mescalina (Le Grand Macabre). In 2025 she made her role debut as Madame de Croissy in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites in Rouen. In 2026 her appearances will include Martha (Iolanta) in Rouen.

Lucile Richardot has released several award-winning albums for the harmonia mundi label, including the 2018 solo album Perpetual Night with the Ensemble Correspondances and, in 2021, Berio To Sing with Geoffroy Jourdain and Les Cris de Paris. In 2023 she and Anne de Fornel released Les heures claires, the first complete recording of the songs of Nadia and Lili Boulanger. Her most recent solo album, Northern Lights, again with the Ensemble Correspondances, was released earlier in 2025.