THÉO RAFFIN

Baritone

 

Théo Raffin is a young French baritone of great talent expected to have a flourishing career. At his young age, he already has a solid technique allowing him to interpret major roles such as Papageno, which he will perform again in February 2024 in a production by the Faculty of Music of the University of Montreal.

 

Spotted by the Trois-Rivières opera house, he was called in May 2023 to perform Zurga in The Pearl Fishers as well as Guglielmo in Così Fan Tutte in September 2023. The young baritone was also requested for the Opera de Poche project co-directed by the Montreal Opera. He will also go on exchange for 1 week in October 2023

at the CNSM (Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique) in Lyon (France) to work on French melody and German lied with, among others, Mireille Delunsch.

 

In 2014, when he started playing clarinet, he was accepted into the Aretha Franklin college in Marciac (France), popular for its introductory workshop on jazz music (AIMJ). In 2015, he was accepted at the Tarbes conservatory where he began a jazz cycle on the clarinet with Mathieu Samani, as well as piano and singing technique lessons.

The following year, he began lyric singing lessons under the watchful eye of Anne-Laure Touya. At the same time, he took clarinet lessons with Chantal Souyeau. In 2018, Théo was accepted at the Bordeaux Conservatory in classical singing with Sharon Coste as well as in bass clarinet with Stéphane Kwiatek.

At the same time, he was accepted for a current jazz and French song music degree (which he will validate in 2021). He will make the difficult choice in 2020 to put aside the clarinet in order to fully concentrate on singing until 2021.

 

In 2021, he was accepted into the music faculty of the University of Montreal for a one-year exchange program, he will study with Richard Margison as well as other teachers and coaches such as Rosemarie Landry, Robin Wheeler and Francis Perron. The same year, he began a distance learning master's degree in music teaching with the University of Tours (France). In 2022 he decided to stay and enrolled in a master's degree in classical singing interpretation, always with the same teacher. This university has already allowed him to increase his experience on stage and with orchestra thanks to the solo roles entrusted to him during opera productions (The Tragedy of Carmen in the role of Escamillo, Die Fledermaus in the role of Dr. Falke), as well as thanks to other projects (galas, baroque workshops, etc.). He was also the recipient of the Anne-Marie Trahan excellence scholarship in fall 2022 and the Georges-Cédric Ferguson scholarship in September 2023.

 

Today, he is still a master's student at the University of Montreal and completed his master's degree in music education with honors in June 2023.

He is also a piano teacher privately and in music schools and is the director of the musical group KINOR in Montreal.