Bernard Arrieta Bass

Season 23/24 Artist – Chorus of the Opera

Raised in the rich Basque choral tradition, in which he has participated actively since childhood, Bernard Arrieta studied singing, trumpeting and choral conducting in San Sebastián (Spain), while obtaining a master's degree in chemistry at the University of the Basque Country. Seduced by the Baroque repertoire, he left his hometown to complete his training at the Baroque Music Center in Versailles. Wishing to deepen his singing studies in a more operatic repertoire, he joined the Paris Conservatoire and completed his singing training with a two years cycle dedicated to opera.

Despite this new focus in his career, his vast experience of the Baroque opera led him to regularly perform, at first, with ensembles including Le Poème Harmonique (Vincent Dumestre), Le Concert d’Astrée (Emmanuelle Haïm), Les Talens Lyriques (Christophe Rousset), Il Seminario Musicale (Gérard Lesne), Akadêmia (Françoise Lasserre), among others.

He founded and conducted the ensemble La capilla de música, specialised in the Spanish Baroque repertoire. He also ventures into other types of repertoire, with Poulenc’s Le Bal masqué, touring with the Poitou-Charentes Orchestra, Stravinsky’s Fox at the Radio France, or Andrew Lloyd-Weber’s Cats at the Théâtre du Châtelet. A member of the Paris Opera Chorus since 2005, he continues to perform as a soloist.

Though he still loves to perform a various repertoire, ranging from melody to oratorio, and still has a passion for the Baroque repertoire, his principal focus is now on opera. He recently portrayed Giorgio Germont (La Traviata), Sharpless (Madama Butterfly) and Baron Scarpia (Tosca), among other roles.

At the Paris Opera: Les Huguenots (a Lord), 2018; Les Troyens (Mercure, Pluto’s Priest), 2019; Don Carlo (Coryphée), 2019; The Barber of Seville (an officer), 2020 ; Œdipe (4^e Thébain), 2021; La Bohème (Sergente dei doganari), 2023