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Cellist Ophélie Gaillard is a versatile player who is familiar in the worlds of Baroque music, traditional repertory, and contemporary works. She is the founder of two small historical performance ensembles and has been active as a teacher for many years.

Gaillard was born on June 13, 1974, in Paris. Her versatility as a cellist began to show itself during her education; she attended the Conservatoire de Paris, studying modern cello with Philippe Muller, chamber music with oboist Maurice Bourgue, and Baroque cello with Christophe Coin. She earned the conservatory's first prizes in all three fields. Gaillard also earned degrees in music teaching and musicology from the Sorbonne University. She has mostly been active as a chamber music player. In 1994, she founded Ensemble Amarillis with her sister, recorder player and oboist Héloïse Gaillard, and harpsichordist Violaine Cochard. Gaillard took third prize at the International Johann Sebastian Bach Cello Competition in Leipzig in 1998 and got a solo instrumentalist of the year nod at the Victoires de la musique classiques competition in France in 2003. In 2001, Gaillard made her recording debut on the Ambroisie label with an album of works by Britten. She performed with Baroque groups led by Christophe Rousset, Emmanuelle Haïm, and John Eliot Gardiner, and in 2005, she created the Pulcinella Ensemble, with which Gaillard remains associated. The group recorded the complete sonatas for cello and continuo of Vivaldi the following year on Ambroisie. Pulcinella Ensemble was renamed the Pulcinella Orchestra in 2013 and continues to perform.

Gaillard has performed and recorded an exceptionally wide variety of music that includes many Baroque chamber works, accordion-and-cello duo music (with accordionist Pascal Contet), Romantic repertory, and contemporary music. Most of her recordings have been of chamber music, but she recorded the cello-and-orchestra recital Dreams with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 2010. Gaillard uses different cellos for her work in Baroque music (a 1737 Francesco Goffriller that was stolen from Gaillard at knifepoint in 2018 but then anonymously returned) and later repertory (an 1855 Bernardel instrument). She often performs with dancers and mimes.

As a recitalist and chamber player, Gaillard has appeared in England, Morocco, the U.S., Japan, and Latin America. Since 2003, when she began teaching at the Conservatoire de Musique et de Danse à Rayonnement Départemental in Aulnay-sous-Bois, France, she has had an important career as an educator. She has been a guest faculty member annually at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, and in 2014, she joined the faculty of the Haute École de la Musique Genève in Switzerland. Gaillard has continued to record, by 2022 issuing some 30 albums on Ambroisie and later Aparte. That year, she led Pulcinella on the album A Night in London with soprano Sandrine Piau and mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot. ~ James Manheim

Soprano Sandrine Piau initially established her reputation in Baroque repertory, most notably in the operas of Handel (Tamerlano, Xerxes, and others). However, she quickly branched out into the Mozart operas, scoring numerous triumphs in such roles as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Servilia in La Clemenza di Tito. She has hardly limited herself to the Baroque and Classical periods, however, and her repertory encompasses 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 other 19th and 20th century staples. Her sizable recording catalog includes Adèle Hugo: Mélodies sur des poèmes de Victor Hugo.

Piau was born in the southwestern Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux on June 5, 1965. She studied at Collège Lamartine and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique du Paris, where she received several citations and prizes for her vocal interpretations in Baroque and other repertory. She also became proficient on the harp. Piau possesses a small but versatile and quite lovely lyric-coloratura soprano voice, consistently even in range and exuding a sense of warmth. By the late '80s, her career was on the ascent, and soon, she was invited to appear in concerts led by some of Europe's leading conductors, including Philippe Herreweghe, William Christie, Gustav Leonhardt, Renè Jacobs, and many others. She also began singing regularly in the more prestigious opera houses at home and abroad: at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, she sang Ismène in Mozart's Mitridate, and at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, she scored a great success as Pamina. Piau has also appeared at Covent Garden, the Amsterdam Opera, and at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris.

Piau gained international acclaim for her recordings in the '90s. Among her more successful early efforts was a pair of William Christie-led performances: Handel's Messiah on Harmonia Mundi (1994) and Purcell's King Arthur on Erato (1995) -- both demonstrated her superior talent in Baroque music. In the new century, she has sung Zdenka in Strauss' Arabella and Nannetta in Verdi's Falstaff, among others. Other recordings have included the 2006 releases of Mozart's Mass in C minor, under conductor Emmanuel Krivine, the all-Vivaldi disc In furore, Laudate pueri e concerti sacri, with conductor Ottavio Dantone, both on the Naïve label, and Frank Martin's Le vin herbé, conducted by Daniel Reuss on Harmonia Mundi. In the later part of her career, Piau was associated with France's Alpha and Aparte labels. She has continued to perform and record Baroque opera but has tended toward recitals like 2014's Mozart's Desperate Heroines and 2022's Rivales, recorded with soprano Véronique Gens. 2024 saw three separate releases from Piau: the orchestral song recital Reflet, the Baroque cantata album Lucrezia, featuring an ensemble of singers, and Adèle Hugo: Mélodies sur des poèmes de Victor Hugo -- all appeared on Alpha or Aparte. In 2006, the French government honored Piau as Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. ~ Robert Cummings & James Manheim