Michel Roux

Michel Roux was born in Angoulême in September 1924 and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under Charles Panzéra. He made his début at the Opéra-Comique in 1949 as Mercutio in *Roméo et Juliette*, and through the early 1950s built his career as a leading French baritone of the post-war recital and operatic stage.

His central repertoire was the French baritone roles of the standard operatic stage — Don Giovanni and the Count in the Mozart operas, the title role in *Pelléas et Mélisande*, Don Quichotte in Massenet’s opera, Posa in *Don Carlo*, Hamlet in Thomas’s opera, and the title roles in *Eugene Onegin* and *Falstaff*. He sang regularly at the Opéra-Comique, the Paris Opéra, the Glyndebourne Festival (where he was a regular guest in the Mozart roles), the Aix-en-Provence Festival and the Brussels Théâtre de la Monnaie. He was also a substantial recitalist particularly in the French art-song repertoire — Duparc, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc — and the leading French Pelléas of his generation, recording the role under Ernest Ansermet, André Cluytens and Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht.

Roux died in Paris in October 1998. Music Preserved’s archive includes a range of his French operatic and recital work.