After a comprehensive curriculum at Nancy Conservatoire under the tutorship of Christiane Stutzmann, Christophe Gay won an award at the "Les Symphonies d'automne" competition in Macon in the Opera category, and was Adami Classical Revelation in 2004.
After his debut at Nancy Opera in Il Prigioniero by Luigi Dallapiccola, he was much applauded in Paris at the Cité de la Musique, at the Opéra Comique, but also at the Aix-en-Provence Festival (in l'Orfeo under the direction of René Jacobs) and at the opera houses of Lyon, Lille, Nantes, Rouen, Toulon, Avignon and Strasbourg.
His career also took an international turn: after Italy where he sang at the Montepulciano Festival (Tuscany) in the world premiere of Enigma by Detlev Glanert, he was invited to Luxembourg, Germany (Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and Braunschweig), Belgium (Brussels) and to the prestigious Glyndebourne Festival in David McVicar's production of Carmen.
His repertoire is varied. He performed in many productions of Baroque operas such Iphigénie en Tauride by Gluck, l'Orfeo, Platée, King Arthur, Castor and Pollux, Dido and Aeneas under the direction of conductors such as René Jacobs, Christophe Rousset, Hervé Niquet... He was also entrusted leading Mozart roles: Don Giovanni, Guglielmo (Così fan tutte) and Papageno (Die Zauberflöte).
He is also much in demand in the large repertoire of XIXth and XXth centuries. Among his performances are Carmen, Rigoletto, Lakmé, Roméo et Juliette, L'Heure Espagnole, Andrea Chenier, Madama Butterfly, Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Wozzeck, Candide... He also performed at the Opéra Comique in Chabrier's L'Etoile led by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Les Mamelles de Tiresias by Poulenc. He also sang the title role in Der Kaiser von Atlantis by Viktor Ullmann in Nancy, at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, then in Caen and Luxembourg City.
In concerts, he sang in Handel's Messiah, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Fauré's Requiem, Chausson's Poème de l'Amour et de la Mer, Bacalov's Misa Tango, La Pastorale by Charpentier, Mors e Vita by Gounod, the Messa di Gloria by Puccini and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana among many others.
His recent highlights include Rigoletto at the Opéra Bastille, Madama Butterfly at the Chorégies d'Orange, King Arthur in Versailles, Platée in Stuttgart, Don Giovanni in Saint-Céré, Fortunio in Limoges and Rennes, Lakmé in Toulon and Avignon, Carmen at the Glyndebourne Festival, Manon and La Vie Parisienne in Marseille, L'Italiana in Algeri at the opéra national de Lorraine, Traviata in Opéra Bastille, Barbe-Bleue as well as Le Roi Carotte in Lyon (directed by Laurent Pelly), Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne at the Paris National opera house, Les Mamelles de Tiresias at Glyndebourne, Ariadne auf Naxos in Limoges, L'Heure Espagnole in Tel-Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic, Roméo et Juliette in Québec city, world premiere of Don Giovanni's Inferno by Simon Steen-Andersen at Opera national du Rhin, Fledermaus in Lille...
His projects include Fortunio in Lausanne, Giuditta at the Opera national du Rhin, Coups de Roulis in Reims...