Gaël Darchen Chorus master

Gaël Darchen has been leading musical projects with children and teenagers for over thirty-five years. When he was just twenty-nine, he took charge of the Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine to make it the most attractive in France and moved it permanently to the Seine Musicale (Boulogne-Billancourt) at the request of Patrick Devedjian.

Since 1995, he has been responsible for training the choruses and child soloists of the Paris Opera. He has been working with major conductors including James Conlon, Valéry Gergiev, Seiji Ozawa, Philippe Jordan or Gustavo Dudamel in more than 2500 performances held at the Palais Garnier and Bastille Opera. He has developed partnerships with prestigious musical and artistic institutions such as the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Aix en Provence Festival and the Comédie-Française. Thanks to him, works specifically created for the Maîtrise have been performed in leading French venues (Théâtre du Châtelet, Opéra de Lille, Opéra de Rouen, Opéra de Massy, Petit Théâtre d’Aix-en-Provence, Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux) or in the most beautiful churches in Paris (Cathédrale Saint-Louis des Invalides, Basilique Saint-Denis, Église Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Sainte-Chapelle de Paris).

In 2014, Gaël Darchen founded Unikanti, an operatic chorus specialising in stage projects and gathering mainly young singers from the Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine who have reached adulthood. This chorus has been invited on several occasions by the Paris Opera Academy and is a regular partner of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. In 2012, Gaël Darchen was made Chevalier des Arts et Lettres by the French Minister of Culture.