The Canadian tenor, François-Olivier Jean, holds a Bachelor of Interpretation at the University of Montreal. He received support from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec and the Canadian Aldeburgh Foundation. In June 2013, he won the first prize in in singing of Europe.
François-Olivier Jean appears in opera, operetta and oratorio. In spring 2013, he debuted in the USA in Actéon by Charpentier with Opera Lafayette company at the Kennedy Center in Washington. He also apears frequently in England in various projects with the Britten-Pears Young Artist Program, as a guest at Aldeburgh. He played the role of the fisherman in the opera Dido and Aeneas by Purcell and, in August 2014, the role of Liberto and the second soldier in l’Incoronazione di Poppea, as part of the Proms concert series at Snape Maltings. Also, with the Britten Pears Young Artist Program in July 2014, he participated in a series of recitals and master-classes on the composer Hugo Wolf.
In March 2014, François-Olivier Jean was a soloist in Johannes Brahms' Liebeslieder-Walzer during the season of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal at the Maison Symphonique. He also played the role of Griolet in the operetta La Fille du Tambour-Major by Offenbach for the Company of Lyric Art of the UK. He also perrformed the title role in the recent creation-of Chants-Libres, the opera Le Rêve de Grégoire, by Pierre Michaud in May in Montreal. Le Devoir has described his performance as "high level".
In June 2015, François-Olivier Jean performed the roles of Andrès, Frantz, Cochenille and Pitichinaccio in Les Contes d'Hoffmann by Jacques Hoffenbach for the Opéra Théâtre de Rimouski. Also in August 2015, he was Remendado in Georges Bizet's Carmen with the l'opéra Théâtre de Rimouski under the baton of Kent Nagano for the Festival Virée Classique.
François-Olivier Jean currently lives in Paris, where he worked for the Choeur de Radio-France |