A graduate of the École Normale de Musique de Paris (Concert Diploma in Piano) and the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon (studies in composition and accompaniment), holder of the Certificat d’Aptitude for piano teaching, and laureate of the 1st International Chamber Music Competition of Martigny (Switzerland), Didier Puntos has continually deepened his pianistic practice in the fields of solo recital, concerto, chamber music, lied, and mélodie. He has performed throughout France as well as in many European countries and worldwide (Canada, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Morocco, Ethiopia, etc.).
A regular guest of Les Solistes de Lyon–Bernard Tétu, he has also collaborated with numerous string quartets (Debussy Quartet, Geneva Quartet, among others) as well as soloists from the Orchestre National de Lyon and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. His discography includes, among others, the complete songs of André Messager with baritone Jean-Baptiste Dumora, as well as the piano-and-wind-quintet works by Mozart and Beethoven.
Alongside his career as a pianist, Didier Puntos became a chef de chant at the Atelier Lyrique of the Opéra de Lyon in 1986. There, he created and performed a version of Maurice Ravel’s L’Enfant et les sortilèges for piano four hands, flute, and cello. This production has since been performed more than four hundred times worldwide and was recorded for television, receiving a FIPA d’Or in Cannes. This adaptation, always under the musical direction of Didier Puntos, has also been performed at the Opéra de Paris, the Opéra de Lausanne, the Teatro Real in Madrid, and at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in July 2012.
Other adaptations of operatic works followed, in collaboration with stage directors such as André Fornier, Patrice Caurier, Moshe Leiser, Jean-Yves Ruf, Jean Liermier, Benjamin Knobil, and Arnaud Meunier. These include La Périchole by Offenbach and Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss, presented among other venues at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The Opéra de Paris also commissioned him in 2005 and again in 2007 to create a version for piano and string quartet and to oversee the musical preparation of Mozart’s Così fan tutte.
Didier Puntos’s activity as a composer took a significant turn with the premiere in April 1999 of L’Ombre des Jumeaux, commissioned by the Opéra National du Rhin for a choreography by Michel Kelemenis. In 2002, his opera L’Enfant dans l’Ombre (a state commission) was premiered at the Théâtre de Villefranche-sur-Saône, on which occasion he conducted the Chœurs de Lyon and the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain. His catalogue also includes vocal works, chamber music, and piano pieces.
From 2003 to 2008, he served as musical director of the vocal ensemble Passeggiata, with which he explored a wide repertoire ranging from Clément Janequin to Olivier Messiaen.
His meeting in 2013 with theatre director Omar Porras led him to conceive, write the text for, and compose much of the music for an unconventional stage production in the form of a “one musician show” entitled Le Blanc et le Jaune.
Most recently, he created an orchestration of Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon for the Opéra de Lausanne and served as its musical director, conducting the ensemble Sinfonietta.
©photo Thierry Porchet
