William Christie

Few things weigh as heavily in the world of classical music as Gramophone's endorsement. This recording didn't lack one. In fact, Les Fetes d'Hebe won Gramophone 1998 Best Early Opera award, joining other highly-acclaimed Les Arts Florissants recordings and cementing William Christie's fame as the principal exponent of French baroque repertory. Les Fetes d'Hebe is an example of the most popular genre in the 18th-century France - opera-ballet. It is not based on a dramatic plot, but presents a series of "entrees," each with an individual subplot and a distinct musical palette. Both vocal and orchestral numbers delight the senses. The cast is mostly composed of performers who frequently appear with Les Arts Florissants. The degree of artistic cohesion this group has achieved is remarkable…
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With Le Jardin de Monsieur Rameau, William Christie invites us to take a pleasant walk in the beautiful garden of French vocal music from the XVIIIth Century. Featured composers include Rameau and his contemporaries, and the repertoire ranges from opera highlights and profane cantatas to instrumental interludes. Christie's program presents a vivid overview of the music that was played in Versailles at the peak of its splendor. The album's vocal soloists are young singers who took part in Le Jardin des Voix (The Garden of Voices) - a biannual musical academy led by William Christie and Paul Agnew that is designed to unveil the most promising talents of the coming generation.

It was only a matter of time before William Christie got around to recording Mozart's delightful 1782 singspiel, and the results are very happy indeed. Period instruments are just right for the raucous "Turkish" music Mozart composed for Entführung, and they go very nicely with the light voices Christie has chosen as well. Most successful is the Belmonte of tenor Ian Bostridge, already famous for his lieder singing.

This is the first recording in the complete Monteverdi cycle with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, made possible by a three-year collaboration between Dynamic and Teatro Real. Luigi Pizzi's attractive and original staging is enhanced by the rich colour of 17th century costumes. The musicians - and Christie himself - also perform in costume, with the conductor clad in a flowing red cloak and white ruffed collar. The DVD also features interviews with Christie, Pizzi and the Opera's two protagonists.

Ornate, opulent, majestic: Handel's music truly exemplifies the Baroque in its elaborate monumentality, which many listeners associate with his vast, dramatic oratorios. Perhaps lesser known, but hardly less significant is Handel's chamber music, which reveals a different kind of artistry, an intimately refined facet of the Baroque spirit. The contrast between the monumental and the intimate in Handel's music is especially interesting since he cultivated chamber music throughout his career, composing works that reflected the development of his style from its Italianate beginnings to the ultimate richness of his late idiom.

A genius with the ability to combine French and Italian influences in an art that transported the English language, Purcell may be William Christie's favourite composer.This production of Dido and Aeneas, directed by Deborah Warner and interpreted by Les Arts Florissants, was overwhelmingly acclaimed when created at the Vienna Festival in 2006 and again when repeated at the Opéra Comique in 2008.This short opera, one of the earliest, is particularly dear to William Christie who has recorded and directed it on several occasions.

The appearance on disc of Antoine Dauvergne's opera-bouffon of 1753, Les Troqueurs is at once a happy occasion and a frustrating one. For while we can rejoice at the chance to make the acquaintance of this charming little intermede, it also serves to remind us that there are an awful lot of French comic operas from the second half of the eighteenth century that remain unheard. This is repertory that is both interesting and important to the history of opera in general, and Les Troqueurs is the work that stands at its head, for following as it did on the heels of the influential Paris performances of Pergolesi's La serva padrona it was the first real attempt at a wholly French comic opera in the same modern, dramatically light-footed mould.

Petits Motets were generally sung in the Royal Chapel during the Mass between a Grand Motet and the Domine salvum fac Regem. The most extended piece here is a Miserere for solo voice by the King's surintendant de la musique, Lalande. In fact the nine solo verses are sung in alternation with plainchant which would have been intoned by nuns. William Christie, who directs this intimate sequence, divides the solo spoils of this expressive piece between three of his sopranos, Veronique Gens, Sandrine Piau and Arlette Steyer. It would be hard to assemble three more persuasive sopranos than these to execute the music. Their almost faultless intonation, fresh-sounding voices and careful expression are both musically delightful and contextually apposite. Comparisons between the three are, perhaps invidious but Steyer sounds the least assured, technically and stylistically, among them.

With William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, relive Christmas Eve as it was celebrated in the France of Louis IV.