Stéphane Degout

French baritone Stéphane Degout made his Royal Opera debut in 2007 as Dandini (La Cenerentola) and has since sung Guglielmo (Così fan tutte), Mercutio (Roméo et Juliette), Count Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), King (Lessons in Love and Violence, world premiere) and Valentin (Faust) for the Company.

Degout studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse, Lyon, and was a member of Opéra de Lyon (1998–2001). He made his professional operatic debut in 1999 as Papageno (Die Zauberflöte) for Aix-en-Provence Festival. Since then he has sung for such companies as Paris Opéra, Berlin State Opera, La Monnaie, Brussels, Theater an der Wien, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Metropolitan Opera, New York, La Scala, Milan, Teatro Real, Madrid, and Bavarian State Opera, and at the Salzburg, Glyndebourne, Holland and Chorégies d’Orange festivals. His repertory includes Monteverdi’s Orfeo and Ulisse, Thésée (Hippolyte et Aricie), Hercule (Alceste), Oreste (Iphigénie en Tauride), Count Almaviva, Guglielmo, Papageno, Raimbaud (Le Comte Ory), Wolfram von Eschenbach (Tannhäuser), the title role in Hamlet, Albert (Werther), Eisenstein (Die Fledermaus) and Pelléas (Pelléas et Mélisande). Alongside King, role creations include Theatre Director (Boesmans’s Pinocchio). 

Degout gives regular recitals throughout Europe and in New York. Alongside several DVD opera recordings, he has recorded CDs with B Records (Enfers) and Harmonia Mundi (Histoires Naturelles, and, most recently, Harmonie du Soir, a collection of Debussy’s melodies). He is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.