Cécile Restier

Cécile Restier studied vocal accompaniment (song and opera) and piano at the Conservatoire National de Musique et Danse in her home city of Paris. As part of her studies, she won three first prizes and was also entrusted with accompanying singing classes, vocal ensembles and diction courses between 2003 and 2007.

In 2007, she took up an engagement as a solo repetiteur at the Frankfurt Opera and has held the same position at the Vienna State Opera from  2012 until 2025. She taught French diction and phonetics at the MUK Vienna. Since September 2025 she is a solo repetiteur at the Lyon National Opera and the director of musical studies for the Lyon National Opera Studio.

Guest engagements have taken Cécile Restier to the Salzburg and Bregenz Festivals, the Bard Summer Festival (USA), French opera houses such as the Opéra-Comique and the Théâtre du Châtelet Paris, the operas in Lyon, Rouen and Montpellier as well as the Théâtre La Monnaie Brussels, the Philharmonie de Paris and the Accademia Santa Cecilia di Roma.

She has worked with conductors such as Alain Altinoglu, Marco Armiliato, Bertrand de Billy, Paolo Carignani, Jean-Claude Casadesus, Frédéric Chaslin, William Christie, Plácido Domingo, Gustavo Dudamel, Christoph Eschenbach, Dan Ettinger, Asher Fisher, Mikko Frank and John Eliot Gardiner, Jésus López Cobos, Ingo Metzmacher, Marc Minkowski, Evelino Pidò and Simone Young, as well as with singers such as Roberto Alagna, Piotr Beczała, Plácido Domingo, Juan Diego Flórez, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Angela Gheorghiu, Peter Mattei, George Petean, Neil Shicoff, Nina Stemme and Béatrice Uria Monzon. Cécile Restier regularly performs as a soloist in recitals and concerts. She has performed with Juan Diego Flórez at the Vienna State Opera, the Musikverein Graz and the Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona, among others.

She performed at the Metropolitan Opera New York for the 2021 New Year’s Eve Gala.