MEET THE ARTISTS

WILLIAM CHRISTIE
CO-MUSICAL DIRECTOR & FOUNDER, LES ARTS FLORISSANTS

Harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist, and teacher William Christie is the inspiration behind one of the most exciting musical adventures of the last 40 years. A pioneer in the rediscovery of Baroque music, he has introduced the repertoire of 17th- and 18th-century France to audiences across the globe. Born in Buffalo, and educated at Harvard and Yale, Christie 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, Christie 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, through Couperin and Mondonville, Christie is the uncontested master of tragédie-lyrique as well as opéra-ballet, and is just as comfortable with the French motet as with music of the court. But his affection for French music does not preclude him from exploring other European repertoire from Monteverdi, Rossi, Scarlatti, Landi, Purcell, Handel, Mozart, Haydn or Bach.

Notable among his most recent operatic work are Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid, Opéra Royal de Versailles, and Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona; Purcell’s The Fairy Queen on an international tour; Charpentier’s Médée at the Opéra de Paris and Teatro Real in Madrid; and Les Fêtes d’Hébé at Paris Opéra Comique. As a guest conductor, Christie often appears alongside the Berliner Philharmoniker or the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at opera festivals such as Glyndebourne or opera houses such as the Metropolitan Opera, Zurich Opernhaus, or the Opéra National de Lyon.

His discography includes more than 100 recordings. The most recent were issued by harmonia mundi in the Les Arts Florissants collection: Conversations — Gaspard Le Roux: Suites pour deux clavecins; Haydn — Paris Symphonies & Violin Concerto No. 1; Nei giardini d’amore — Baroque arias for 2 altos.

Wishing to further develop his work as a teacher, in 2002 he created Le Jardin des Voix, Les Arts Florissant’s biennial Baroque academy for young singers, now established at Thiré in Vendée. Since 2007 he has been artist in residence at The Juilliard School, where he gives master classes twice a year. In 2021, he launched, with Les Arts Florissants, the first Arts Flo Masterclasses for young professional musicians at the Quartier des Artistes in Thiré. In 2012, he created the summer festival Dans les Jardins de William Christie in his own gardens in Thiré, where he welcomes Juilliard musicians and singers of the Jardin des Voix, along with the musicians and singers of Les Arts Florissants. In 2008, he was elected to France’s Académie des Beaux-Arts. In 2022 he was the recipient of the PdSK (German Record Critics’ Award) Honorary Award.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season included a South American tour of The Fairy Queen, Charpentier’s Midnight Mass at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Handel’s Concerti grossi, Scarlatti’s Messa di Santa Cecilia, an international tour of Les Arts florissants / La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers with winners of the 12th edition of Le Jardin des Voix, and residencies at the Philharmonie du Luxembourg and in Madrid.

PAUL AGNEW
MUSICAL CO-DIRECTOR, LES ARTS FLORISSANTS

An artist of international renown and an accomplished teacher, British tenor and conductor Paul Agnew has made his mark on all the main international stages as a specialist in the music of the 17th and 18th centuries and as the performer of choice for the high-tenor roles of the French Baroque. After studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, he met William Christie in 1992 and subsequently became a close collaborator of the conductor and his ensemble Les Arts Florissants, while continuing to perform with such other conductors as Marc Minkowski, Ton Koopman, Paul McCreesh, Jean-Claude Malgoire, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe, and Emmanuelle Haïm. In 2007, his career took a new turn when he began conducting certain projects for Les Arts Florissants. From 2011 to 2015, he undertook a complete cycle of Monteverdi’s madrigals, a project for which he directed nearly 100 concerts throughout Europe and made three recordings for harmonia mundi, the first of which won the Gramophone Award in 2016. He has conducted Les Arts Florissants in such productions as the ballet Doux Mensonges (Opéra de Paris), a new production of Rameau’s Platée (Theater an der Wien, Paris’s Opéra Comique and Lincoln Center), and created a new production of L’Orfeo as part of the celebration of Claudio Monteverdi’s 450th anniversary.

He is artistic director of the Festival de Printemps — Les Arts Florissants which has taken place in churches throughout the region of the Vendée in France since its creation in 2017, and is co-director of Le Jardin des Voix, Les Arts Florissants’ academy for young singers. This interest in the training of new generations of musicians has led him to conduct the Orchestre Français des Jeunes Baroque, the European Union Baroque Orchestra and, in 2017, the European Baroque Academy. Dedicated to musical education for all, he has devised educational concerts such as Le Voyage de Monsieur Monteverdi and La Lyre d’Orphée.

As a guest conductor, Agnew regularly conducts orchestras such as the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, the Staatskapelle Dresden, Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra,   Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Houston Symphony, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.

Recent projects with Les Arts Florissants include a concert cycle dedicated to Carlo Gesualdo and recorded by harmonia mundi (Gramophone Award, Diapason d’Or, CHOC de Classica), Bach’s St. John Passion, the concert series Bach: A Life in Music at the Philharmonie de Paris and the Festival d’Ambronay, Handel’s Messiah, Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice (recorded by harmonia mundi), and the new production Gesualdo Passione, created with choreographer Amala Dianor. He also conducted Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, staged by choreographer Mourad Merzouki, with laureates of the Jardin des Voix on stages such as Lincoln Center, Philharmonie de Paris, and Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms.

Highlights of the 2025/26 season included Bach: A Life in Music at Wigmore Hall and Philharmonie de Paris, The Fairy Queen in Spain, Bach’s Midnight oratorio on international tour, Gesualdo Passione on French tour and at the Barbican Centre in London, Handel’s Rinaldo at the Philharmonie de Paris, as well as a new production of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea at Monteverdi Festival Cremona.