Cécile Simonnet was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

tic soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

.

Having obtained in Lille a first prize for singing, she entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1882, graduating in 1884 with first prize in song and opéra-comique (pupil of Bax).
Simonnet made her debut in Monte-Carlo in January 1885 under Pasdeloup. Her Opéra-Comique

Opéra-Comique

The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

 in Paris debut was on 10 September 1885 in the title role of Lakmé. Her repertoire included Philine in Mignon

Mignon

Mignon is an opéra comique in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce's The Dead,...

, Mireille, Le Pré aux clercs, and Violetta in La Traviata.

She notably portrayed Rosenn in the premiere of Edouard Lalo

Édouard Lalo

Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo was a French composer.-Biography:Lalo was born in Lille , in northernmost France. He attended that city's music conservatory in his youth. Then, beginning at age 16, Lalo studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Berlioz's old enemy François Antoine Habeneck...

's Le roi d'Ys

Le roi d'Ys

is an opera in three acts and five tableaux by the French composer Édouard Lalo, to a libretto by Édouard Blau, based on the old Breton legend of the drowned city of Ys, which was, according to the legend, the capital of the kingdom of Cornouaille. It premiered at the Opéra Comique in Paris on 7...

(7 May 1888), as well as creating the roles of Angiola in Proserpine by Saint-Saens and Angélique in Le Rêve by Bruneau.

She was singing Philine in Mignon the night of the fire at the Salle Favart on 25 May 1887.

She performed in Nice, Aix-les-Bains, London (Covent-Garden) and was engaged at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels for the 1894-95 season.