After making her mark at a very young age in many competitions (Marmande, Béziers, Nîmes, Arles, UPMCF, Musiques au cœur du Médoc), mezzo-soprano Éléonore Pancrazi won second prize at the Pietro Antonio Cesti International Baroque Singing Competition in 2017. In 2018 she was a finalist at the Voix Nouvelles competition and then at the Glyndebourne Opera Cup (Mozart edition), and was named an ADAMI Révélation; in 2019 she was crowned Révélation Lyrique (opera newcomer of the year) at the Victoires de la Musique Classique.

Born in Corsica, where she took her first steps on stage at the “Nuits d’été de Corté” festival, she completed her vocal training in Isabel Garcisanz’s class at the prestigious École Normale de Musique Alfred Cortot, where her outstanding studies were crowned in 2013 by a concert diploma awarded unanimously with the jury’s congratulations.

A member of the Opéra Studio de Lyon and of the academies of the Aix-en-Provence Festival and the Opéra-Comique, and a laureate of the Fondation Royaumont, she joined the ensemble of the Stadttheater Klagenfurt in Austria for the 2020/21 season.

Her full, rich and highly agile mezzo, her round, heady timbre recalling her Mediterranean roots, and her solid, expressive lower register allow her to tackle a wide range of repertoire, from Baroque to Lied, from bel canto to contemporary works – not forgetting French mélodie and French opera, which she holds especially dear.

Her already rich career bears witness to this: she has sung Hansel (Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel), Mrs Slender (Salieri’s Falstaff), Orphée (Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice), Elisa (Handel’s Tolomeo), Irene (Handel’s Tamerlano), Ruggiero (Handel’s Alcina), Aurora (Cavalli’s Gli amori di Apollo e di Dafne), Cherubino on several occasions (Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro), Dorabella (Mozart’s Così fan tutte), the Second Lady (Mozart’s The Magic Flute), Berta (Rossini’s The Barber of Seville), Maffio Orsini (Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia), Prince Charming (Massenet’s Cendrillon), Louise (Varney’s Les Mousquetaires au couvent), Metella (Offenbach’s La Vie parisienne), Concepción (Ravel’s L’Heure espagnole), the Child as well as the Chinese Cup, the Dragonfly and the Mother (Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges), Oréna and Téria (Reynaldo Hahn’s L’Île du rêve), Madame Darbel (Halévy’s L’Éclair), Urbain (Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots), Sémiramis (Destouches’s Sémiramis), La Ciesca (Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi), Giovanna (Verdi’s Rigoletto), Flora Bervoix (Verdi’s La traviata), Varvara (Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová), Dinah (Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti), Mercédès (Bizet’s Carmen), Zerlina (Mozart’s Don Giovanni), and Melpomène and Mélisse (Lully’s Atys)...

She has also been invited to create much-noticed roles in contemporary works such as Pascal Zavaro’s Manga Café, Bruno Gillet’s 100 Miniatures, Isabelle Aboulker’s Jeremy Fisher and the Requiem by composer Hélène Rasquier, who has also dedicated many songs to her.

She has performed on prestigious international stages such as the Yomiuri Hall in Tokyo, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Staatstheater Karlsruhe, the Stadttheater Klagenfurt, the Opéra Royal de Wallonie, the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, the Grand Théâtre and Victoria Hall in Geneva and the Kodály Centre in Pécs, and has been applauded on France’s greatest stages, including the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Opéra-Comique and the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris, the Opéra de Lyon, the Capitole de Toulouse, the Opéra national de Lorraine, the Opéra Royal de Versailles, the Centre Lyrique d’Auvergne and the opera houses of Avignon, Limoges, Marseille, Massy, Montpellier, Toulon, Tours and Vichy.

Éléonore also loves the recital: she has been heard at the Musée d’Orsay in a Britten recital, at La Seine Musicale in a programme of Russian music, at the Abbaye de Royaumont in Chausson’s Chanson perpétuelle, at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in Alexandra Martines’s cantata “Orgoglioso fiumicello” under Corinna Niemeyer, at the Grand Théâtre de Provence in a Berlioz gala conducted by Jérémie Rhorer, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées with Clément Mao-Takacs’s Secession Orchestra, and twice at the Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice: in 2022 in a Massenet recital with Ian Barber at the piano, and in 2023 with the late soprano Jodie Devos in a programme of “Voyages oniriques”, with François Dumont at the piano.

Éléonore also performs at many festivals – Glyndebourne, Aix-en-Provence, the Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik, Deauville, the Festival Berlioz at La Côte-Saint-André, the Festival de Cordes-sur-Ciel (where she has been artist in residence since 2022), the Festival Musica Nigella and the Deauville Easter Festival – and in many concerts: at the Philharmonie de Paris in Campra’s Requiem under Christophe Rousset, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in Mozart’s Requiem, at the Festival de La Côte-Saint-André in the first part of Les Troyens under François-Xavier Roth and in Berlioz’s Zaïde under Jordi Savall, at the Victoria Hall in Geneva in Monteverdi’s Vespers with the ensemble I Gemelli under Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, and at the Froville Baroque Music Festival in Handel’s La resurrezione under Julien Chauvin.

She has had the good fortune and the honour of working with eminent conductors such as Marc Minkowski, Hervé Niquet, Christophe Rousset, Jordi Savall, Duncan Ward, Michele Spotti, Federico Maria Sardelli, Giacomo Sagripanti, Jérémie Rhorer, Attilio Cremonesi, Nicholas Carter, José Miguel Pérez-Sierra, Eun Sun Kim and Alexis Kossenko… with great stage directors such as Laurent Pelly, James Gray, Fiona Shaw, Marshall Pynkoski, Jean-Romain Vesperini, Marco Arturo Marelli, Emilio Sagi, Jean-Louis Grinda, Jérôme Deschamps, Ivan Alexandre, Christian Lacroix and Cesare Lievi… and of refining her vocal technique with great artists such as Ludovic Tézier, Felicity Lott, François Le Roux, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Ian Bostridge, René Jacobs, Janine Reiss, Leontina Vaduva, Jean-François Lapointe, Christiane Eda-Pierre and Jeff Cohen – not forgetting her teachers Isabel Garcisanz, Susan McCullough, Raphaël Sikorski and Caroline Fèvre.

With the Palazzetto Bru Zane, Éléonore Pancrazi has recorded Reynaldo Hahn’s Ô mon bel inconnu, Saint-Saëns’s La Princesse jaune and Mélodies persanes, Mozart’s Requiem and Giovanni Paisiello’s Mass for the Coronation of Napoleon; with the ensemble Les Ombres, André Cardinal Destouches’s Sémiramis, in which she sings the title role; with the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles, Joseph Bodin de Boismortier’s Les Voyages de l’Amour and Lully’s Atys; with the ensemble Musica Nigella under Takénori Némoto, Chausson le littéraire; and with the ensemble Les Apaches under Julien Masmondet, Pascal Zavaro’s new work Manga Café.

In November 2024 Éléonore released her first solo album, “A Voce di a Terra”, on the Oktav Records label – a vibrant tribute to her native island, featuring Corsican folk songs arranged and orchestrated by Maurice Ravel.

Together with soprano Jennifer Courcier, tenor Enguerrand de Hys and baritone Philippe Estèphe, Éléonore founded the OPALE quartet, a vocal ensemble that champions the ensemble repertoire.

This season her plans take her to the Opéra Royal de Versailles, where she makes her major debut in the title role of Carmen under Hervé Niquet, in a production by Romain Gilbert, and also sings Calypso in Porpora’s Polifemo, Erenice in Handel’s Sosarme and the Marquise de Berkenfield in Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment; then to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where she sings Annina in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier – her first collaboration with Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski – and Zulma in a concert performance of Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri under Julien Chauvin.

Finally, she will tackle her first Verdi role, Preziosilla in La forza del destino, in a co-production between the Fondazione Teatro Regio di Parma, the Opéra de Montpellier and the Opéra de Toulon.