Discover the 16 international artists selected for the 2025 Voice Residency!

For its 27th edition, the Académie has selected 16 artists for the 2025 Voice Residency — twelve singers, three pianists/vocal coaches, and one conductor — for this programme focused on improvement and openness.

The 2025 Voice Residency continues the tradition of singing-based residencies at the Académie since its inception. It is being held this year during a period that covers the end of rehearsals for the Festival’s opera productions and the opening week of the Festival’s 77th edition, and will thus provide the participants with a stimulating environment, visibility, and unique opportunities for artistic and interprofessional encounters.

The Académie received a record number of applications for this residency, with 529 applications from 65 nationalities! After a first selection, 66 applicants were invited to the final auditions (25 applicants in New York and Paris 40 applicants in Paris, in November 2024). The selection process has been designed to ensure the highest artistic quality as well as vocal diversity, backgrounds, and cultures, in order to achieve the fullest possible representation of the opera world.

Invited for the first time in 2023, Darrell Babidge, vocal coach and chair of the voice department at the Juilliard School, will be at the helm of this residency, offering the artists his listening skills and advice. In addition, the Académie is inviting the baryton Stéphane Degout to lead the first two weeks of the residency. The pianist and vocal coach Marine Thoreau La Salle, and the conductor Sébastien Daucé, will complete this panel of mentoring artists.

The residency programme includes master classes; concerts programmed as part of Aix en juin; musical encounters organised with Passerelles, the cultural initiatives department of the Festival; and, in July, a professional audition, participation in the production The Story of Billy Budd, Sailor after Benjamin Britten for some, and for others a concert with the ensemble Correspondances led by its musical director Sébastien Daucé and the conductor in residence Guillemette Daboval. Each concert programme focuses on a particular repertoire: the great opera arias, French song, and French and Italian baroque music.

The Voice Residency is supported by Société Générale Foundation and Engie Foundation.

The following artists have been selected for the 2025 edition of the Voice Residency:

Conductor
Guillemette Daboval (France)

Adami, a long-standing partner of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, once again proves its commitment to performing artists with its support for the residency for women conductors. Through this programme, which the Académie created in 2021, Adami participates in the training, promotion and career development of a new generation of women conductors.

Soprano
Emily Richter (United-States)
Lucia Tumminelli (Italy)
Meredith Wohlgemuth (United-States)

Mezzo-soprano
Mathilde Ortscheidt (France)
Emily Treigle (United-States)

Tenor
Hugo Brady (Ireland)
Matthew Goodheart (United-States)
Daniel Espinal (Cuba / Dominican Republic)

Baryton
Armand Rabot (England / Sri Lanka)
Noam Heinz (Israel)
Navasard Hakobyan (Armenia)
Thomas Chenhall (England)

Pianists and conductor
Anna Gershtein (Russia)
Antoine Dutaillis (France)
Benjamin Read (United-States)