Opéra de Lausanne

At the Opéra de Lausanne : Antigone by Honegger (February 1986).

Jean-Philippe Lafont studied music in his hometown of Toulousebefore joining the Opera Studio of the Paris National Opera. His teacher Denise Dupleix has always followed him in his career.

He rapidly appeared on the big French stages (Paris National Opera and the Châtelet, Toulouse’s Capitole, the operas of Nice, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence and the Chorégies d’Orange), and immediately began an international career, appearing in Amsterdam, Vienna, in Brussels at La Monnaie, Liège , Milan’s Scala, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Florence, Verona Arena, the festivals of Bayreuth and Salzburg, Carnegie Hall and the New York Metropolitan, Chicago.

He has worked under the conductor’s baton of great names such as Georges Prêtre, Sir Colin Davis, James Conlon, Charles Dutoit, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Friedemann Layer, Lorin Maazel, Evelino Pidò, Seiji Ozawa, Michel Plasson, Antonio Pappano, Marc Soustrot, P. Steinberg and Bertrand de Billy. Jean-Philippe Lafont regularly sings the leading parts of Wozzeck, Falstaff, Macbeth, Rigoletto, Gianni Schicchi, Guillaume Tell and Nabucco. He also sings the parts of Barak (Die Frau ohne Schatten), Leporello (Don Giovanni), Mephistopheles (The damnation of Faust), Golaud (Pelléas et Mélisande), Grand Prêtre (Alceste), Thoas (Iphigénie en Tauride), Tonio (I Pagliacci), Hérode (Hérodiade), Sancho (Don Quichotte), Quatre Diables (Les contes d’Hoffmann), Jack Rance (La fanciulla del West), Scarpia (Tosca), Grand Prêtre (Samson et Dalila), Iokanaan (Salomé), Oreste (Elektra), Amonasro (Aida), Iago (Otello), Barnaba (La Gioconda), etc.

Since he took part in the Bayreuth Festival, appearing in Lohengrin in 1999 and 2002, he has established himself in German roles such as Amfortas (Parsifal), Telramund (Lohengrin – sung with the Opéra de Paris in 2007, conducted by Valery Gergiev and alongside Ben Heppner), the Dutchman (The Flying Dutchman).

He recently took part in Chabrier’s Étoile at the Opéra Comique, Dialogues des Carmélites in Vienna, Thésée at the TCE and Lille, Salammbô by Ernest Reyer and Elias in Marseille , Il Tabarro and Gianni Schicchi at the Macao Festival, La Périchole (The Viceroy) in Toulouse, Béatrice et Bénédict at the TCE with the French National Orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davis, Samson et Dalila and Pelléas et Mélisande at the Manaus Festival, Werther at Baden-Baden with Deutsche Grammophon recording, The Cunning Little Vixen at the Opéra National de Paris, Jeanne au Bûcher with Fanny Ardant, at the Festival de Salzbourg 2010.

This season Jean-Philippe Lafont is set to perform in Dialogues des Carmélites in Nice, La fiancée vendue at the Opéra National de Paris, Tosca in Vienna, Werther in Madrid, Cinderella in Covent Garden and at the Chorégies d’Orange.

Upcoming performances : Roméo et Juliette in Marseille, various projects in Marseille, Monte-Carlo, at the Opéra National de Paris, La Scala in Milan, etc.