Stanislas de Barbeyrac was born in
Annecy (
Haute Savoie) on 27 April 1984. His mother's family was Polish and working class. His paternal grandfather arrived in Normandy as a member of the
Polish forces that fought alongside Allied forces after the fall of Poland in World War II. His father's family had its roots in the traditional and conservative French aristocracy. He received a Catholic education and religion remains important for him. He was the youngest of four children. His family moved to Bordeaux when he was eight. From age eight to seventeen he sang with the , a youth choir devoted to church music. He later said he considered his participation in this choral school a hobby () on a par with rugby. It did not include any formal musical instruction. He had stopped singing when his voice broke and missed it. He decided to explore formal music education, was accepted at the
Bordeaux Conservatoire. In 2004, in his first class with Lionel Sarrazin, himself a new teacher, de Barbeyrac was thunderstruck to discover a repertoire and range of possibilities that immediately convinced him that he would become a singer. He later explained: "My first class was a revelation for me. The world of lyric was unknown to me.... I happily discovered the sounds I could make, the theater, the use of the body. Without being shy, I was a little inhibited: it transformed me. I quickly understood that this was what I had to do. So I threw myself headlong into this learning process." He has received consistently high praise for his work in Paris, for example as Lyonnel in Chausson's
Le roi Arthus in May 2015.
Le Point later wrote that his opening in the Chausson made the audience forget the starring singers (
Thomas Hampson and
Roberto Alagna) who were yet to appear: "In five minutes of quietly sighing chivalrous ideals, Stanislas de Barbeyrac established himself in the big leagues. He obviously had what we notice and will no longer forget, a timbre, a well-spoken manner, a color of sensitivity which comes immediately into the voice, a personality." In 2017, he made his US debut with the
San Francisco Opera as Don Ottavio in
Don Giovanni, a role he reprised in his
Metropolitan Opera debut in 2019. ==Awards==