A spirit of insatiable curiosity, a taste for risk-taking, an immoderate appetite for the entire cello concerto repertoire, with no boundaries and no quarrels of chapel, a commitment to citizenship and an unconditional love of nature - these are undoubtedly the qualities that distinguish this brilliant performer from an early age.
Voted "Instrumental Soloist of the Year" at the 2003 Victoires de la Musique Classique awards, she has since performed in recital in Asia and Europe, and has been a guest with such prestigious orchestras as the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, the Orchestre National de Metz, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and the New Japan Philharmonic. For Aparté, she has recorded a number of internationally acclaimed complete works: Bach, Britten, Schumann, Fauré, Chopin, Brahms, CPE Bach and Strauss, as well as thematic albums such as Dreams, Alvorada and Exils, which have won her a huge following.

An avid collaborator, she regularly shares the stage with Lambert Wilson, hip-hop dancer Ibrahim Sissoko, choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, Étoile dancers Hugo Marchand and Ludmila Pagliero, and bossa nova star Toquinho (live album Canto de sereia recorded for Aparté at the MiTo festival in 2017). In 2005, she founded the Pulcinella Orchestra, which she directs from the cello, and with which she explores the repertoires of the 17th and 18th centuries on historical instruments. After a double album devoted to Boccherini in 2019, recorded with the complicity of Sandrine Piau, Ophélie Gaillard and Pulcinella are enjoying widespread public success with a double Vivaldi album, "I colori dell'ombra", recorded at the height of the health crisis with mezzo-sopranos Lucile Richardot and Delphine Galou.

In early 2021, still with Aparté, Ophélie Gaillard took us on a journey through 100 years of opera arias with her recording "Cellopera", accompanied by the Vienna Morphing Orchestra, conducted by Frédéric Chaslin, with transcriptions for cello and orchestra of works by Mozart, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Offenbach and Puccini, and in March 2022, with "A Night in London", Ophélie takes us to meet the composers who tried their luck in London in the 1730s, such as Porpora, Geminiani and Bononcini. A sought-after pedagogue, she has been a professor at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Genève since 2014, and is regularly invited to give masterclasses and serve as a jury member at major international competitions (ARD Münich, Concours de Genève, Cello Biennale d'Amsterdam...). Ophélie Gaillard plays a Francesco Goffriller 1737 cello generously lent by the CIC and an anonymous Flemish piccolo cello.

Marie Hallynck et Didier Poskin, coordination

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