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Soprano Sabine Devieilhe (de-vi-EL-a approximates it) became a fast-rising star in the 2010s, with charisma and a versatile voice that drew comparisons to vocal superstar Natalie Dessay. Her range of roles has stretched from the Baroque to contemporary works, and she has appeared widely with both historically oriented performers and traditional musicians.

Devieilhe was born in Ifs, in France's Normandy region, on December 12, 1985. Her parents, special education teachers, were not musical, but she showed talent at a local music school and enrolled at the Caen Conservatory at 12. Devieilhe studied cello at first, but voice teachers induced her to study singing as well. At the University of Rennes, she also studied musicology and ethnomusicology and performed in the choir in several local opera productions. In 2008, she entered the Paris Conservatory as a singer, winning the school's top prize and graduating in 2011. In 2010, she made her recording debut as a member of the ensemble Les Cris de Paris, appearing on its album Encores. Her solo debut came the following year on the Glossa label with the album Gustave Charpentier: Music for the Prix de Rome.

It didn't take long for her career to blossom, both on stage and, more unusually for a singer so early in her career, on major-label recordings. Devieilhe was signed to the Erato label in 2013, and in addition to operatic appearances, she has made several innovative and highly successful recital albums. Devieilhe sang the title role in Delibes' Lakmé at the Montpellier Opera, reprising the role in 2014 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Another major early role was that of the Queen of the Night in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in 2013 at the Opéra National de Lyon, again repeating the role in Paris at the Opéra National. She has also performed the role of Amina in Bellini's La sonnambula several times.

Devieilhe won the Lyric Artist Revelation award at the annual Victoires de la musique classique ceremony in 2013 and followed it up in 2015 with a Lyric Artist of the Year nod. In 2015, she released Mozart: The Weber Sisters, highlighting music written by Mozart for Aloysia and Constanze Weber. In 2018, she joined Lea Desandre for an album of duo Italian cantatas by Handel. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019, performing a program of French songs, and she recorded an album's worth of them in 2020 with pianist Alexandre Tharaud. Devieilhe's recording career intensified in the early 2020s, with three albums released in 2021 alone. She was heard on Erato in two operas, Mozart's Mitridate, re di Ponto, K. 87, and Rameau's Achante et Céphise, as well as in a Bach and Handel recital with the early music ensemble Pygmalion. In 2022, Devieilhe sang the soprano part in Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G major with the historical performance group Les Siècles, and she returned in 2024 on Erato with a recital of songs by Mozart and Richard Strauss, accompanied by pianist Mathieu Pordoy. By that time, her recording catalog comprised some 50 items. The asteroid 33346 Sabinedevieilhe is named for her. ~ James Manheim

Raphaël Pichon has had dual careers as a countertenor and later as the founder and director of the historically oriented choir Pygmalion. That group has developed into a major force in the performance of French Baroque opera.

Pichon was born in Paris on October 17, 1984. As a child, he sang in a famous youth choir, the Maîtrise des Petits Chanteurs in Versailles. Pichon studied the violin and piano at the Versailles Academy, but he told Télérama, "As a child, working on the [violin], alone in my room, put me off; I only rediscovered pleasure in making music by discovering the joy of building a sound together in a choir...." Moving on to the Paris Conservatory, Pichon began to come closer to his ultimate place, studying voice and conducting. As a countertenor, he performed under some of the leading early music conductors of the early 21st century, both French and foreign, including Jordi Savall, Jean Tubéry, and Ton Koopman. Pichon founded Pygmalion in 2006 and built it into one of the most successful choral ensembles oriented toward early music. For a time, Pichon also conducted the chamber choir OTrente, which specialized in Romantic and contemporary works, but he stepped down to devote full time to Pygmalion. That group made its debut recording on the Alpha label in 2010 with a release devoted to Bach's Missae Brevis, BWV 233 and BWV 236.

The group, accompanied by period instruments, has performed not only in France but around Europe and in China and Hong Kong. Pygmalion has especially been associated with productions of Baroque opera and has appeared on leading French stages, including the Opéra Royal de Versailles and a theater at the Festival of Aix-en-Provence. The group collaborated with the Bordeaux Opera in notable productions of Rameau's operas Castor et Pollux and Dardanus -- later becoming artists-in-residence with that company -- and also worked with the venerable Opéra-Comique in Paris. Pichon and Pygmalion recorded several more albums for the Alpha label. In 2014, the group moved to Harmonia Mundi for a recording of Bach's rarely performed Köthener Trauermusik, BWV 244a. Pichon and Pygmalion have continued to record for Harmonia Mundi, also backing soprano Sabine Devieilhe on the album Mozart: The Weber Sisters in 2015. In 2020, the ensemble released the album Johann Sebastian Bach: Motets on Harmonia Mundi. Pichon and Devieilhe teamed up once again on the album Bach, Handel on Erato in 2021, and the group returned to Harmonia Mundi for a recording of Bach's Matthäus-Passion, BWV 244. In 2023, Pichon and Pygmalion recorded Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine. ~ James Manheim