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The high tenor Cyrille Dubois has performed an unusually wide variety of roles, ascending early in his career to appearances at La Scala, the Paris Opera, and other top houses. He has recorded for Aparte and other labels.

Dubois was born in Ouistreham on the Normandy coast on September 27, 1984. By the time he was six, he was already singing in a municipal choir there, and the following year, he joined the children's choir, the Maîtrise de Caen. He made rapid progress as a singer, mastering English and appearing in a production of Britten's The Turn of the Screw at the Opéra de Lyon at age 12. He took a break from singing after his voice changed and contemplated a scientific career, but he returned to music and enrolled at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Paris, studying with Alain Buet. After finishing his studies, he joined the Lyric Workshop at the Paris Opera and began to find major roles there: Sam Kaplan in Kurt Weill's Street Scene in 2010 and Goncalves in Ravel's one-act opera L'heure espagnole the following year. In 2012, Dubois made his debut at Italy's La Scala, in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann.

Soon, he was appearing in other major houses, including the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2013, playing Count Almaviva in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia. He sang in a new production of Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann at the Opéra de Lyon in 2014. He reprised the Ravel work at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2015. In the late 2010s, Dubois appeared in Mozart operas at a variety of venues, including Così fan tutte at the Paris Opera in 2017; he also appeared in Auber's opera Le Domino Noir at the Liège Opera that year. Dubois has also performed recitals with pianist Tristan Raës as Duo Contraste; the pair won prizes at the Lili and Nadia Boulanger Competition and the Lyon Chamber Music Competition and has appeared at Wigmore Hall in London.

Dubois has been heard on several recordings, including three opera albums in 2018 alone: a performance of Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de Perles, conductor Hervé Niquet's production of Fromental Halévy's La reine de Chypre, and conductor Christophe Rousset's revival of Antonio Salieri's almost unknown Les Horaces. Dubois has issued several solo albums on the Aparte label, including Liszt: O lieb! in 2019 and Lili et Nadia Boulanger: Mélodies in 2020. His appearances in 2021 included one as Tamino in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, K. 620, at the Opéra Bastille in Paris. Dubois and Raës issued a complete recording of Fauré's songs in 2022, winning a Gramophone Classical Music Award. Dubois joined Baroque keyboardist Christophe Rousset in 2023 on the album François Couperin: The Sphere of Intimacy; in the same year, he issued So Romantique!, a French aria collaboration with the Orchestre National de Lille. He released several more albums in 2023, including Jouissons de nos beaux ans! with the Baroque-specialist Orfeo Orchestra and Purcell Choir; that album exploited the haute-contre quality of Dubois' voice, approaching a countertenor sound. In 2024, Dubois was featured on an Alpha recording of Charpentier's Médée under the direction of Hervé Niquet. ~ James Manheim

Both as a harpsichordist and as a conductor, Christophe Rousset is a leader in the contemporary revival of French Baroque music. He is exceptionally prolific as a recording artist, with well over 100 albums to his credit.

Rousset was born on April 12, 1961, in Avignon, France. After studying piano as a boy, he became deeply interested in the harpsichord at age 13. He studied with Huguette Dreyfus at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and, from 1980 to 1983, with Bob van Asperen at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. He won a special certificate of distinction at the Schola Cantorum and, in 1983, the first prize at the International Harpsichord Competition in Bruges. Rousset rose quickly through the ranks of the world's harpsichordists. He soon appeared at some of the most prestigious early music festivals, including those of Aix-en-Provence, Utrecht, and Les Printemps des Arts de Nantes, among others. He recorded for the Decca label and its early music imprint L'Oiseau-Lyre, and a recording of the Piéces de clavecin of Rameau won the 1992 Gramophone Award for Best Baroque Non-Vocal Release and the Belgian Cecilia Prize. During his time as a specialist in Baroque harpsichord, he often performed the harpsichord continuo parts in ensemble music. It was natural that Rousset's harpsichord appearances with such established authentic instrument ensembles as La Petite Bande, Musica Antique de Cologne, and the Academy of Ancient Music led him to an interest in leading a Baroque ensemble, and he founded Les Talens Lyriques in 1991. The group was primarily interested in reviving French Baroque music and exploring the connections between the distinct national styles of France and other major European nations. An important introduction of Les Talens Lyriques to the wider world came in 1993 at the Festival de Beaune when the group performed Handel's opera Scipione. It has also played ballets and operas of Cimarosa, Berutti, and Mondonville and experienced popular success with the soundtrack for the movie Farinelli, which had extraordinary sales for an early music classical release, moving well over 600,000 copies worldwide.

Rousset has continued to record as a solo harpsichordist, often exploring the rich fund of French Baroque harpsichord music beyond Rameau and Couperin. The explosion of interest in Baroque opera in the 2010s has stimulated a busy schedule of performances and recordings of operas with Rousset as director; he has recorded, mostly for the Aparte and Ediciones Singulares labels, such novelties as Lully's Amadis (2014), Antonio Salieri's Les Danaïdes (2015), and, in 2017, Etienne-Nicolas Méhul's early Romantic Uthal. By that time, Rousset ranked as one of the most prolific performers of Baroque repertory on the European scene. Between 2018 and mid-2020, he released no fewer than 13 albums, mostly on Aparte, and he remained vigorously active through the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, he moved to the Château de Versailles label for a recording of Lully's opera Psyché. Rousset is noteworthy as a teacher and mentor, with countless "graduates" from Les Talens Lyriques populating European early music orchestras and stages. In 2004, he was honored by the French government as Officier des Arts et Lettres and Chevalier dans l'Ordre National du Mérite. ~ James Manheim & Joseph Stevenson

The historical performance ensemble Les Talens Lyriques has devoted itself to Baroque opera and often to the revival of unfamiliar operatic scores. The group also performs works in other genres, many of them French.

Les Talens Lyriques was formed in 1991 by harpsichordist and conductor Christophe Rousset, who remains its director. It is supported not only by patrons but by the city of Paris and the French Ministry of Culture. The ensemble took its name from the subtitle of Rameau's 1739 opera Les Fêtes d'Hébé. It has participated in productions of such difficult-to-stage works as Les Indes galantes, with its Peruvian-Native American-Turkish setting. The ensemble has collaborated with a variety of directors, choreographers, and stage designers in its efforts to bring to life operas from the Baroque era and later. Performances and recordings by Les Talens Lyriques have ranged from Monteverdi (all the major operas and many madrigals and sacred works as well) and Cavalli (La Didone, La Calisto) to Handel (ten operas, including the rare Riccardo Primo). Les Talens Lyriques began to record quite early on, issuing the album Pascal Collasse: Cantiques spirituels de Racine on the Erato label in 1993.

Lully, whose operas have rarely been performed, has been represented in Les Talens Lyriques' catalog by Persée, Roland, and Bellérophon, among others. The group has revived works by Desmarest (Vénus et Adonis), Mondonville (Les Fêtes de Paphos), Cimarosa (Il Mercato di Malmantile, Il Matrimonio segreto), Traetta (Antigona, Ippolito ed Aricia), Jommelli (Armida abbandonata), and Martin y Soler (La Capricciosa Corretta, Il Tutore burlato). The group's repertory extends forward not only to Mozart (Mitridate, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Così fan tutte) but also to his rival Salieri (La Grotta di Trofonio, Les Danaïdes, Les Horaces); not only to Beethoven, but to Cherubini (Médée), García (Il Califfo di Bagdad), Berlioz, Massenet, and even Saint-Saëns.

The group members have served as artists-in-residence at the Singer-Polignac Foundation in Paris and have devoted some of their energies to educational initiatives designed to introduce young people to Baroque music. Les Talens Lyriques has released more than 60 albums on the Erato, FNAC Music, and Decca labels, among others. Perhaps the most publicly noted was the soundtrack album of the 1994 film Farinelli, depicting the great 18th century castrato. The year 2017 saw four new releases by Les Talens Lyriques, including a trio of Lully operas and a return to Farinelli in a live performance featuring mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg, and the year 2019 was similarly productive. In 2021, Les Talens Lyriques released an album featuring Salieri's rarely-heard opera Armida. The group remained active through the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing three Lully operas on the Aparte and Château de Versailles labels. In 2024, Les Talens Lyriques and Rousset issued a recording of composer Louise Bertin's Fausto on the Palazzetto Bru Zane label and one of Domenico Cimarosa's L'Olimpiade, about the original Olympic games, on Château de Versailles. The group also backed tenor Michael Spyres on the recital album In the Shadows. ~ James Manheim