Alain Duault studied literature, philosophy and psychoanalysis in Paris, followed by musicology and piano.

After holding various positions in the print media, he became a columnist for Classica and for the website Opera Online.

On television – where he made his first appearance in 1978 as a guest of Bernard Pivot for a book of poems, Colorature – he has been France 3’s “Mr Classical Music” for more than thirty years. He was also “Mr Classical Music” at RTL for twenty-two years before joining Radio Classique from 2012 to 2018.

After fifteen years as artistic director of Viva l’opéra, the programme of opera screenings in cinemas, he is now director of music cruises for the cruise line Ponant.

Alain Duault is also the author of many books on music (Verdi, Chopin, Schumann, the Strauss family, opera – including the Dictionnaire amoureux de l’opéra) and of books of poetry: he received the Grand Prix de Poésie de l’Académie française in 2002 for his body of work, the Prix Mallarmé in 2013 and the Prix Alain Bosquet in 2020, and an anthology of his poems, Où vont nos nuits perdues, has been published in paperback in Gallimard’s Poésie collection.

In 2023 he published Le ciel jaloux des roses, a collection of travel journals interwoven with poems recounting his journeys around the world, followed in 2025 by On ne dort pas même quand on dort.

He is also the author of several novels, including Dans la peau de Maria Callas, reissued in paperback and later republished as Les derniers jours de Maria Callas. His latest novel, Une femme de feu, about Maria Malibran – the Callas of the 19th century – was published in 2021.

A member of the Académie Mallarmé and of the jury of the Prix Alain-Bosquet, he also chairs the jury of the Prix Pelléas.

Alain Duault is an Officier of the Légion d’honneur and a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.

Alain Duault gives musical talks on a wide range of subjects:

- Composers (Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Dvořák, Schumann, Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Satie, Gounod, Massenet, Bizet, Grieg, Sibelius, Handel, Mahler, Johann Strauss, Delibes, Mendelssohn, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, Vivaldi, Mozart, Offenbach, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, etc.)

- Works (every opera in the repertoire)

- Performers (Callas, Malibran, Karajan, Pavarotti and other legendary artists)

- Cross-cutting themes (Chopin and George Sand; Robert and Clara Schumann; Chopin and Rachmaninoff; Italian bel canto; verismo; the castrati; American music; Spanish music; seduction through music; the five pillars of Romanticism; Verdi and Wagner: intertwined destinies; the History of Music in three volumes, etc.)

- Cities and music (Vienna, Venice, Prague, Budapest, Paris, Berlin, Milan, etc.)

- Alain Duault also writes and performs imaginary interviews with composers – Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and others – drawn from their letters, diaries, contemporary accounts and historical documents.