Villisech was an actor and singer in the theatre company of
Jean-Louis Barrault. He studied at the
Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, and continued his studies at the
Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Academy Chigiana in Siena. He was a prize-winner at the
ARD International Music Competition in Munich. In opera, he appeared in both serious and comic bass parts, such as the title role in Massenet's
Don Quichotte, Don Basile in Rossini's
Il barbiere di Siviglia, Geronimo in Cimarosa's
Il matrimonio segreto, and Prince Gremin in Tchaikovsky's
Eugene Onegin. Villisech performed in 1965 the bass arias in the
pioneering recording of
Nikolaus Harnoncourt of Bach's
St John Passion, with
Kurt Equiluz as the
Evangelist and
Max van Egmond as the
vox Christi (voice of Christ). In the Harnoncourt recordings of Monteverdi's operas, he appeared as Plutone in ''
L'Orfeo'', alongside
Rotraud Hansmann as Euridice and
Lajos Kozma as Orfeo. He recorded several
Bach cantatas with the
Monteverdi-Chor, conducted by
Jürgen Jürgens, including the
Actus tragicus and the secular
Hunting Cantata. He was the soloist in Bach's secular cantata on an Italian text
Amore traditore, conducted by
Gustav Leonhardt. He recorded the Requiem by
Camille Saint-Saëns with the Ensemble chorale Counterpoint and the
Orchestre lyrique de l'ORTF, conducted by . Villisech was a voice teacher at the Conservatoire National de Région de Versailles. He founded a vocal ensemble called Quartet of Versailles. ==Author==