Les Arts Florissants: Charpentier at Christmas

Les Arts Florissants is a renowned ensemble of singers and instrumentalists specialising in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. It was founded in 1979 by the Franco-American harpsichordist and conductor William Christie and has played a pioneering role in the revival of a Baroque repertoire that had long been neglected. Today that repertoire is widely performed and admired: not only French music from the reign of Louis XIV, but also more generally European music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Since 2007, the ensemble has also been conducted by the British tenor Paul Agnew, who was appointed Musical Co-director in 2019.

Each season Les Arts Florissants gives around 100 concerts and opera performances in France – at the Philharmonie de Paris, where it is Artist-in-Residence, the Théâtre de Caen, Opéra Comique, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Château de Versailles, as well as at numerous festivals – and as an ambassador for French culture abroad, being regularly invited to New York, London, Edinburgh, Brussels, Vienna, Salzburg, Madrid, Barcelona, Moscow, and elsewhere.

Since the 1987 production of Lully’s Atys at the Opéra Comique, it has been on the opera stage that Les Arts Florissants has enjoyed its greatest successes. Notable productions include works by Rameau, Lully, Charpentier, Handel, Purcell, Mozart and Monteverdi, but also by composers who are less frequently played, such as Landi, Cesti, Campra and Hérold. 

For its theatre productions, Les Arts Florissants has worked with leading stage directors and renowned choreographers. 

Les Arts Florissants enjoys an equally high profile in the concert hall, as illustrated by its many acclaimed concert or semi-staged performances of operas and oratorios, its secular and sacred chamber-music programmes and its approach to large-scale works. 

The ensemble has a discography of nearly 100 recordings on CD and DVD. 

In recent years, Les Arts Florissants has launched several education programmes for young musicians. Central to these is the Academy of Le Jardin des Voix: created in 2002, it is held every two years and has already brought a substantial number of new singers into the limelight. The Arts Flo Juniors programme, launched in 2007, enables conservatory students to join the orchestra and chorus for the duration of a production; it also has a partnership with the Juilliard School, which since 2007 has allowed a fruitful artistic exchange between the US and France. Last year it launched an annual programme of masterclasses in Thiré (in the Vendée) led by William Christie and Paul Agnew to help young professionals improve their skills. 

Les Arts Florissants also organises numerous events aimed at building new audiences. 

In 2012, William Christie and Les Arts Florissants created the festival Dans les Jardins de William Christie, in partnership with the Conseil départemental de la Vendée. An annual event, the festival brings together artists from Les Arts Florissants, students from the Juilliard School and finalists from Le Jardin des Voix for concerts and promenades musicales in the gardens created by William Christie at Thiré. In addition to the festival, Les Arts Florissants is working towards the creation of a permanent cultural venue in Thiré. This aim was furthered in 2017 through the accolade of ‘Centre culturel de Rencontre’ for Les Arts Florissants and Les Jardins de William Christie – an award which distinguishes projects associating creation, heritage and dissemination. The following year saw the creation of the Les Arts Florissants–William Christie Foundation. 

Les Arts Florissants receives financial support from the French state — the Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs (DRAC), the Département de la Vendée and the Région Pays de la Loire. The Selz Foundation is its Principal Sponsor. Aline Foriel-Destezet and the American Friends of Les Arts Florissants are Major Sponsors. Les Arts Florissants has been ensemble-in-residence at the Philharmonie de Paris and is recognised as a ‘Heritage Site for Culture’.

William Christie is a harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist and teacher, and the inspiration behind one of the most groundbreaking musical adventures of the last 40 years, having introduced the repertoire of 17th- and 18th-century France to a very wide international audience. Born in Buffalo, and educated at Harvard and Yale, he has lived in France since 1971. The turning point in his career came in 1979, when he founded Les Arts Florissants.

As director of this vocal and instrumental ensemble, he soon made his mark as both a musician and man of the theatre, in the concert hall and the opera house. Major public recognition came in 1987 with the production of Lully’s Atys at the Opéra Comique in Paris.

From Charpentier to Rameau, via Couperin and Mondonville, he is the master of tragédie-lyrique as well as opéra-ballet, and is just as comfortable with the French motet as with music of the court. Nor does his affection for French music preclude the exploration of other European repertoire, including the music of Monteverdi, Rossi, Scarlatti, Landi, Purcell, Handel, Mozart, Haydn and Bach.

Notable among his most recent operatic work are Handel’s Jephtha at the Opéra de Paris and Ariodante at the Wiener Staatsoper, The Beggar’s Opera on European tour and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Salzburg Festival, Rameau’s Platée at Theater an der Wien, Mondonville’s Titon et l’Aurore at the Opéra Comique and Handel’s Partenope on international tour.

As a guest conductor, William Christie often works with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at venues such as Glyndebourne, the Metropolitan Opera, New York, Zurich Opera House and Opéra National de Lyon.

His award-winning discography includes more than 100 recordings.

Wishing to develop further his work as a teacher, in 2002 he created Le Jardin des Voix, Les Arts Florissants’s biennial Baroque Academy for young singers, now established at Thiré in the Vendée, his own gardens where in 2012 he created the festival Dans les Jardins de William Christie. Since 2007 he has been Artist-in-Residence at the Juilliard School in New York, where he gives masterclasses twice a year. Last year he launched with Les Arts Florissants the first ‘Arts Flo Masterclasses’ for young professional musicians at the Quartier des Artistes in Thiré.

In 2018 he created the Les Arts Florissants–William Christie Foundation. Christie has gifted his entire Thiré estate to the Foundation.

In 2008 he was elected to France’s Académie des Beaux-Arts.

His projects for this season include Molière and His Music to mark the playwright’s 400th birthday; Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas directed by Blanca Li; a sequence of concerts of French music for Christmas at Fontevraud; duo recitals with violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and harpsichordist Justin Taylor; Haydn’s The Seasons; Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato; Charpentier’s music for the Nativity and for Holy Week; the fourth part of his series of Airs sérieux et à boire; and concert programmes with leading soloists, including Véronique Gens, Lea Desandre, Carlo Vistoli and Hugh Cutting.

Emmanuelle de Negri has demonstrated a remarkable breadth of repertoire and emotional range since the beginning of her career, singing Yniold in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and the title-role in Pasquini’s oratorio Sant’ Agnese before establishing an enduring performing relationship with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, for whom highlights have included Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, The Indian Queen and Dido and Aeneas, Handel’s Susanna and Silete venti, Monteverdi’s Selva morale e spirituale, and numerous roles in French Baroque operas.

She has appeared regularly with other prominent French ensembles such as Pulcinella, Les Folies Françoises, Les Enfants d’Apollo, Raphaël Pichon’s Pygmalion, Vincent Dumestre’s Le Poème Harmonique, Le Banquet Céleste, Les Paladins and Les Accents. For Emmanuelle Haïm and her Concert d’Astrée, she also sung in Rameau’s Castor et Pollux and, recently, in a highly acclaimed new production of Rameau‘s Les Boréades staged by Barrie Kosky for Opéra de Dijon.

Further opera repertoire has ranged from roles in Monteverdi and Cavalli to Offenbach and Dukas, via Rameau, Hasse, Handel and Mozart.

Recent highlights include Cephise (Schürmann’s Die getreue Alceste) under Christina Pluhar; Les Indes galantes and Sémiramis at Versailles; Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno with both Accademia Bizantina and Les Arts Florissants; Messiah on tour; a celebration of Molière at 400 with William Christie and Les Arts Florsissants; and a tour of Handel’s Israel in Egypt with René Jacobs and the Freiburger Barockorchester.

Highlights this season include a recital with harpsichordist Brice Sailly, French cantatas with Thibault Noally’s Les Accents and French mélodies accompanied by Romain Descharmes, as well as a number of programmes with Les Arts Florissants. On stage, she takes the title-role in Rameau’s Io and Héro in de la Garde’s Héro et Léandre with Opéra Lafayette and sings Helena in a production of The Fairy Queen at Drottningholm.

Her discography includes Caldara’s Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo with Le Banquet Céleste and Damien Guillon, Rameau’s Dardanus and Castor et Pollux, a DVD of Lully’s Atys, a recital disc Bien que l’Amour (with William Christie) and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice under Laurence Equilbey.

Soprano Julie Roset won this year’s Metropolitan Opera Laffont Competition. She began her vocal studies at an early age, studying initially in Avignon and Geneva, before going on to the Juilliard School.

On the opera stage she has appeared as Papagena (The Magic Flute) at Opéra de Toulon and made her Paris debut as Amour (Mondonville’s Titon et l’Aurore) with Les Arts Florissants and William Christie. Appearances at the Aix-en-Provence Festival include Valletto and Amore (L’incoronazione di Poppea) under Leonardo García Alarcón and as Clorinde (Il Combattimento, la théorie du cygne noir, a musical journey through the Italian Baroque) conducted by Sebastien Daucé. She sang Amour (Les Indes galantes) at Opéra Royal de Versailles and the Beaune Festival and appeared as Euridice (Rossi’s Orfeo) at the Juilliard.

As a concert performer, she has formed strong connections with numerous ensembles, including Leonardo García Alarcón’s Cappella Mediterranea and Ensemble Pygmalion under Raphaël Pichon. She made her debut with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France as Galatea (Acis and Galatea).

Nun Danket Alle Gott, her first solo recording, made with Ensemble Clematis, features works by Buxtehude, Hammerschmidt and Monteverdi. Other recent recordings include d’India with Cappella Mediterranea, Brabant with Holland Baroque and, most recently, L’Orfeo with Cappella Mediterranea.

Highlights of this season include her debut tour with Philharmonia Baroque in the title-role of Theodora under Richard Egarr and her house debuts at Teatro Real and Opéra du Rhin. Other concert highlights include tonight’s programme of Charpentier with Les Arts Florissants and Die Schöpfung with Le Concert de la Loge at the Saint-Denis Festival.

British tenor Nicholas Scott enjoys a busy international schedule, and is particularly renowned in the field of early music.

Last summer he made his debut at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in a concert version of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with Cappella Mediterranea, a piece he reprises at the Kölner Philharmonie and has already toured throughout Europe and South America. Other recent and current highlights include Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso e il Moderato with Les Arts Florissants under William Christie at the Lanaudière Festival and Handel’s Esther conducted by Paolo Zanzu in Vezelays.

Earlier this season he made his Italian debut with Filarmonica Toscanini in a concert performance of Les Indes galantes, followed by his return to Canada with Arion Baroque and performance at Chateau de Versailles with Les Ombres and his debut with Ensemble de l’Encyclopédie in Geneva. Tonight’s concert is part of two tours he makes with Les Arts Florissants (returning in April 2023), performing at leading venues including the Paris Philharmonie and Carnegie Hall, among others.

Other highlights include his debut at the Berlin Philharmonie conducted by Vincent Dumestre; a reprise of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo with Cappella Mediterranea in France and Canada; and performances and a recording of the word premiere of Philippe d’Orléans’s La Jérusalem délivrée at Opéra Royal de Versailles under Leonardo García Alarcón.

Past notable engagements include Lully’s Atys at Grand Théâtre de Genève; L’Allegro, il Penseroso e il Moderato at the Beaune Festival, his debut with the Dunedin Consort at Wigmore Hall and Nevill Holt Opera and his return to Zurich Opera.

He has an extensive discography, which includes Sacrifices with La Nuova Musica; Cavalli’s Egisto, Lully’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme and Cadmus et Hermione and Anamorfisi, all with Le Poème Harmonique; Handel’s Chandos Anthems with Ensemble Marguerite Louise, and, with Les Arts Florissants, a series of cantatas with William Christie and mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre and, with Paul Agnew, an album titled Les Maîtres du Motet Français.

While undertaking piano studies at the Narbonne Conservatoire, Bastien Rimondi also undertook a master’s degree. He studied singing with Michel Wolkowitsky and then in Toulouse with Jacques Schwarz. In 2017 he began studies at the Paris Conservatoire with Frédéric Gindraux, graduating with honours last year.

His repertoire ranges from the Baroque to contemporary, and in the opera house his roles have included Ferrando (Così fan tutte), Don Ottavio (Don Giovanni), Almaviva (The Barber of Seville), Wedgwood Teapot, Mr Arithmetic and Tree Frog (Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges), Monsieur de Crotignac (Cimarosa’s Le Peintre Parisien), Dorvil (Rossini’s The Silken Ladder), the Doctor (Debussy’s The Fall of the House of Usher) and the Innocent (Mussorgsky’s Boris Godounov). Most recently he has sung Don Ottavio and the role of Râma in Olivier Calmel’s Râmâyana for Opéra de Massy.

This season he performs in Le Monde selon Mozart with Les Ambassadeurs and sings the role of the Evangelist in Bach’s St John Passion with Les Arts Florissants.

Since 2015 he has performed with pianist Timothée Hudrisier as the Florestan Duo, and they have appeared at a number of festival venues in France.

Lisandro Abadie was born in Buenos Aires, where he began his musical studies, later graduating from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and Lucerne’s Musikhochschule. He was awarded the Edwin Fischer Gedenkpreis in 2006.

He has sung under the direction of William Christie, Laurence Cummings, Facundo Agudin, Václav Luks, Jordi Savall, Paul Agnew, Paul Goodwin, Giovanni Antonini, Fabio Bonizzoni, Skip Sempé, Vincent Dumestre, Simon-Pierre Bestion, Hervé Niquet and Geoffroy Jourdain. In the field of opera, his wide repertoire extends from Monteverdi to contemporary music, notably the works of Handel and Viktor Ullmann. In 2010 he created the title-role in Oscar Strasnoy’s Cachafaz.

He has collaborated with ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants, Collegium 1704, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Les Talens Lyriques, Le Poème Harmonique, La Tempête, Le Concert Étranger, Ensemble Inégal and La Risonanza. He also works with the lutenist Mónica Pustilnik and the pianist and composer Paul Suits. He regularly appears at the Handel festivals in London, Karlsruhe and Göttingen.

Among his numerous recordings are Handel’s Siroe, the complete Monteverdi madrigals, Music for Queen Caroline, Airs sérieux et à boire, The Tempest, Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, Der Rose Pilgerfahrt, Bach Mirror and a DVD of La Resurrezione.

Recent highlights include Lully’s Phaëton in Perm and at Versailles; Campra’s L’Europe galante in Potsdam and Prague; Rossini’s La Cenerentola and Offenbach’s Les fées du Rhin with the Théâtre Orchestre Bienne Soleure; tours and recordings with Les Arts Florissants, Le Poème Harmonique and Collegium 1704, and Marais’s Alcyone at the Barcelona Liceu.