Stéphane Degout studied singing at the Lyon Conservatory of Music before joining the Lyon Opera and the Aix-en-Provence Festival Academy. He made an acclaimed debut at Aix in 1999 as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, which launched his international career. Since then he has sung at the Theater an der Wien (Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, the title role in Monteverdi's L’Orfeo, Orestes in Iphigénie en Tauride, Pelléas, and the title role of Thomas' Hamlet), at Covent Garden, London (Dandini in La Cenerentola, Mercutio in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette and Guglielmo); at the Metropolitan Opera, New York (Mercutio, Papageno, Pelléas and Raimbaud in Le Comte Ory); at the Lyric Opera of Chicago (Papageno); at La Scala, Milan (Raimbaud); at the Bavarian State Opera, Munich (Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro); at La Monnaie, Brussels (Orfeo, Schaunard in La Bohème, Papageno, Guglielmo, Pelléas, Count Almaviva, Orestes); and at the Festivals of Salzburg, Glyndebourne, Holland, Aix-en-Provence and the Chorégies d’Orange. He took part in the creations of La Dispute by Benoît Mernier (2013) and of Au Monde by Philippe Boesmans (2014) at La Monnaie, Brussels. Stéphane Degout is a regular concert and recital singer, recently making his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Riccardo Muti.
He has recorded the Fauré and Brahms Requiems and Mélodies (an album of French mélodies), together with DVDs of Werther, Così fan tutte, Pelléas et Mélisande and Le Comte Ory for Virgin Classics, and La Bohème for Deutsche Grammophon. He was made a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts and des Lettres in September 2012 and the same year received the « Operatic Artist of the Year » award at the Victoires de la Musique. In 2013, he was named « best principal male role » in the Musictheaterpreis in Austria for the title role in Hamlet at the Theater an der Wien.