Sandrine Piau Essentials

This French soprano sings opera with all the clarity and silvery tones of the instrument she studied as a child in the early ‘70s, the harp. There's a liquidity and lightness to her voice even when embracing darkness, as in Sandrina's "mad scene" from Mozart's La finta giardiniera—which kicks off a 2014 album devoted to Mozart's "desperate heroines"—or conveying love's inevitable disappointment in Britten's "The Salley Gardens". Particularly admired for roles in baroque opera, Piau dazzles in Grétry's L'Amant Jaloux, tumbling through roulades before coming to a pained rest.