Contralto Delphine Galou has been principally associated with Baroque opera, especially the operas of Handel and Vivaldi, in historically informed performances. She has sung lead roles in operas by those two composers at major opera houses around Europe. Galou was born in Paris in 1977. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne but took vocal and piano courses privately, and she scored a breakthrough when she was designed "Discovery of the Year" by France's Association for the Promotion of Young Artists in 2004. By that time, she had already sung such roles as Hänsel in Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel (at the Opéra National du Rhin in 2000) and Mercedes in Carmen. After a variety of appearances at regional French houses such as the Théâtre Graslin Nantes and the Grand Théâtre Angers, where she appeared in multiple roles in Ravel's Les enfants et les sortilèges in 2006, Galou sang the role of Eufemia at Germany's Schwetzingen Festival in 2007; that marked the beginning of a move toward Baroque opera. An appearance in the title role of Handel's Giulio Cesare at the Théâtre de Caen established her as a Handel specialist, and she has since performed Baroque opera under several of the top French and Italian historical-performance conductors, including Christophe Rousset, Ottavio Dantone, and Marc Minkowski. In a 2012 performance of Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans at the Misteria Paschalia festival in Krakow, Poland, Galou played not Judith, but her beheading victim, Holofernes. A majority of her performances have been of Handel and Vivaldi, however she has also appeared in operas by Gluck, Britten, and Agostino Steffani, among others. Galou made her debut recital recording, Agitata, on the Alpha label in 2017, and in 2019 she issued a pair of Vivaldi albums on Naïve, Arie e cantata per contralto and Musica sacra per alto.