French soprano Véronique Gens is one of the great Baroque singers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Born in Orléans on April 19, 1966, she studied singing at the Conservatoire and met the American conductor William Christie, who integrated her into his baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants. Collaborating with Hervé Niquet in the ensemble Le Concert Spirituel, Gérard Lesne with Il Seminario Musicale, Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques and Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre, she tackled the Mozart repertoire with Jean-Claude Malgoire and his orchestra La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy in the opera Don Giovanni (1998), then in her first recital Mozart: Airs de Concert et d'Opéras (1998). Alongside her roles in Baroque operas, Véronique Gens, who in 1999 won the Victoire de la musique classique as "Lyric Artist of the Year", recorded for Virgin Classics the albums Handel: Lucrezia - Cantatas (1999), Nuits d'Étoiles - Mélodies Françaises (2000), Berlioz: Les Nuits d'Été - La Mort de Cléopatre (2001) and the triptych Tragédiennes (2006-2011). In addition to a volume of Canteloube's Chants d'Auvergne for the Naxos label (2005) and a Berlioz - Ravel recital for Ondine (2012), the Orléans-based soprano collaborates with pianist Susan Manoff on Néère (2015), which brings together melodies by Duparc, Chausson and Hahn. This first recording for the Alpha Classics label is followed by Visions (2017), Nuits (2020) and Passion (2021), among multiple productions of operas by Rameau, Saint-Saëns or Gounod. In 2022, the two great Baroque divas Véronique Gens and Sandrine Piau are reunited for the recital Rivales, followed by the premiere of Cantates pour le Prix de Rome and Massenet: Songs with Orchestra. With Hervé Niquet, she records Poulenc's monodrama La Voix humaine, Marais's Ariane et Bacchus (released in 2023), Charpentier's Médée (2024), Desmarest and Campra's Iphigénie en Tauride and Offenbach's recital Les Divas in 2025.
