François Girard

Biography

François Girard was born in 1963 in Quebec, Canada. He gained notoriety as much for his filmmaking as for his staging of operas and theater.

In 1993, his feature film Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould would go on to garner international success. Five years later The Red Violin, which received an Academy Award for the best original score, enshrines Girard on the international movie scene. Followed Silk in 2007, Boychoir in 2014 and Hochelaga, Land of Souls in 2018. His latest film The Song of Names was released in 2019. Let’s also mention Peter Gabriel’s Secret World which earned him a Grammy Award for the best concert film in 1995.

In 1997, Girard made his opera directorial debut with Oedipus Rex / Symphony of Psalms. His other opera credits include Lost Objects, Siegfried, Seven Deadly Sins / Linderbergflug and Émilie. He also signed Parsifal and Der fliegende Holländer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

For the stage, he directed Alessandro Baricco’s Novecento, Franz Kafka’s Trial, Yasushi Inoue’s Hunting Gun, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Glen Berger’s Underneath the Lintel. Cirque du Soleil’s commissioned Girard to write and direct ZED, their first permanent show in Tokyo and Zarkana which opened at Radio City Music Hall, played at the Kremlin Theatre became a resident show in Las Vegas.

To date, François Girard’s works have earned over one hundred international awards and public acclaim the world over.

Photo by Yves Lacombe