In the mid-1600s, a young Italian arrived in Paris and soon transformed the still-evolving art form of opera into something quintessentially French. More than three hundred years later, a harpsichordist born in Buffalo, New York, also came to Paris and had a similarly seismic effect on the performance and appreciation of 17th- and 18th-century French opera. That musician, William Christie, turned 80 in December, and the explosion of gala celebrations honoring him touched down in New York City late last month.
Atys, an opera by Florence-born Giovanni Battista Lulli, later known as Jean-Baptiste Lully, proved the vehicle that would turn Christie’s group Les Arts Florissants (LAF) into one of the world’s most sought-after ensembles offering “historically informed performances” (HIP) of baroque vocal music. Lully’s operas, though acknowledged as historically important, were generally dismissed as uninteresting and thus rarely revived or recorded. However, in 1987 LAF mounted a gripping production of Atys, and suddenly, French baroque opera became a hot ticket.
Founded in 1979 and named after a short opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, another nearly forgotten composer that Christie has consistently championed, Les Arts Florissants first performed in New York in 1987 with a modest program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Two years later, however, a large contingent of soloists, chorus and orchestra brought a lavish Atys to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and since then, Christie and his musicians have appeared nearly annually at BAM, Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall.
Christie and LAF were not the first to delve into the rich body of sacred and secular vocal music written in France between 1660 and 1760, but their bracingly dramatic yet intensely elegant approach has resulted in revelatory performances of masterpieces by Lully, Charpentier and Jean-Philippe Rameau, in addition to stage works by Henry Purcell and George Frideric Handel. The group began recording for Harmonia Mundi in the mid-1980s and their extensive discography on that label and, later on, Erato welcomed listeners to musical riches most had never heard before.
Commemoration of the maestro’s 80th began last year with grand stagings in Paris of Charpentier’s Médée and Rameau’s Les Fêtes d’Hébé.
Christie then embarked on a busy concert tour showcasing highlights of his long career. For its only appearance in the U.S., Les Arts Florissants arrived at a dramatically reconfigured Zankel Hall on January 28 with a small group of instrumentalists and six singers drawn from Le Jardin des Voix, the ensemble’s much-acclaimed young artists program now celebrating its twentieth year. The concert opened with compelling excerpts from Médée; though the noted composer Nadia Boulanger recorded highlights from the score in the early 1950s, LAF’s full-length version on three CDs truly reintroduced Charpentier’s powerful score—which predated by more than a century Cherubini’s better-known opera by the same name—to 20th-century audiences.
British mezzo Rebecca Leggatt opened the concert with an aching, affecting portrait of Charpentier’s betrayed sorceress in tense dialogues with Juliette May as her confidant Nérine and then Bastien Rimondi as the faithless Jason. Eschewing the minimally accompanied secco (dry) recitatives found in Italian opera seria, early French operas employ organically flowing recitatives that transition seamlessly into more expansive arias or duets (and sometimes dances or choruses) accompanied either by a small continuo group or the entire orchestra.
Throughout the Zankel evening, Christie’s singers urgently declaimed their texts with crisp diction, which was particularly helpful as Carnegie Hall kept its auditorium’s lighting so dim that few could make out the generously provided twenty-two pages of texts and translations!
Excerpts from Atys followed–beginning with its celebrated sleep sequence “Sommeil d’Atys.” The hypnotic trio was begun by a plangent Richard Pittsinger, an American tenor who will participate in the 2025 edition of Jardin des Voix. He was joined by Rimondi and baritone Mathieu Walendzik who themselves were joined by Serge Saitta on traverse flute and Yanina Yacubsohn and Nathalie Petibon on recorders—together, they wove a hushed, magical spell. That moment in particular was no doubt fondly recalled by anyone who experienced Atys when it was performed at BAM in 1989, 1992 or 2011: the final run was the gift of a wealthy American fan who just had to see it one more time!
The seamless ninety-minute program concluded with a medley of familiar moments from five Rameau operas, including two brilliant solo showpieces: the florid “Règne, Amour” from Pygmalion and La Folie’s over-the-top satirical aria from Platée. In the former, Rimondi suavely negotiated the elaborate coloratura, while as La Folie, the gamely flamboyant Ana Vieira Leite only occasionally gave into the temptation to mug and pout.
Throughout the evening, Christie didn’t conduct per se but performed as a member of the ensemble at the harpsichord and organ. Cueing was done by concertmaster Emmanuel Resche-Caserta to a band that included David Simpson on basse de violon, a longtime LAF veteran since Atys. While the crew of eight string players worked well for Lully and Charpentier, they sounded rather thin in Rameau’s sumptuously colorful instrumental music.
The instantly infectious “Forêts paisibles” from Les Indes Galantes brought the printed program to a close, but it was quickly followed by the ravishing “Tendres amours,” a frequent LAF encore. It originates as a brief quartet also from Indes but much expanded into an ensemble for all the singers with full orchestral accompaniment.
Each celebratory concert has featured special surprise guests (Natalie Dessay and Laurent Naouri popped up at a December Philharmonie de Paris event), and New York welcomed Joyce Didonato, who recounted her anxiety about performing for Christie for the first time when she starred in LAF’s production of Handel’s Hercules two decades earlier. Despite her nervousness, the experience proved to be exhilarating and one which helped to propel the American mezzo to international prominence. As her tribute, she joined the musicians in a slow but intensely moving “As with rosy steps” from Handel’s Theodora.
Ten days before the Zankel Center Stage concert, Christie led a Handel-Rameau program at the Juilliard School, an institution with which he’s had strong ties since the school began its sterling Historical Performance program in 2009. Soon after its founding, the student ensemble named itself Juilliard415 after the traditional lower concert tuning pitch adopted by many for baroque music. Christie has been an annual participant in the program; in addition to private interaction with students, he has led public concerts, most significantly offering captivating readings of rare early Handel works composed during his brief stint in Italy. Eager singers and instrumentalists have joined Christie in rare and excellent opportunities to perform Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Le Resurrezione, and Aminta e Fillide.
This year’s Juilliard415 Handel program was far less exotic: familiar arias from Alcina and Giulio Cesare sung by soprano Song Hee Lee sandwiched between movements from one of the Opus 6 Concerti Grossi. String intonation in the concerto was uncomfortably inconsistent, but Lee sparkled in “Tornami a vagheggiar” and “Da tempeste” to which she added some unusual and elaborate ornaments, including a very long cadenza with violin and recorder that culminated in a long and striking high E-flat.
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After intermission, the orchestra found stronger footing in French music and displayed much more stylish playing in suites from operas Castor et Pollux and Dardanus, the latter the one major full-length Rameau masterpiece that Christie and LAF have yet to perform. Lee was even better in the Rameau excerpts, singing with winning delicacy. Christie took special note of her ease in this challenging repertoire and predicted success for her if she continued with it.
The rare and interesting repertoire that Christie has embraced has consistently surprised and delighted New York audiences for nearly four decades. However, a concert by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, an acclaimed HIP ensemble from the UK, at the 92nd Street Y that happened between Christie’s pair of appearances seemed oddly like a return to the days when “exotic” baroque music was only presented in easily digestible tidbits. Though the large group led by first violinist Kati Debretzeni played with snappy zest, frequent chatty introductions by band members about very familiar works turned the evening into something awkwardly intended for beginners.
We got Handel’s “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba;” just one of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons; and the third of Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos. Chestnuts like Pachelbel’s “Canon” and Bach’s “Air on a G String” were sometimes followed by less familiar pieces like Telemann’s Hamburger Ebb und Fluth (but just four movements of the prolific composer’s ten-section “Water Music”) and one movement of a Vivaldi double-cello concerto. The last bit happened because the group’s trumpeter was unfortunately absent, as he was still recuperating in hospital from an accident that occurred earlier in the tour in California.
The missing trumpeter also meant that soprano soloist Julia Bullock had to duet instead with oboist Daniel Bates in Handel’s exultant “Let the Bright Seraphim,” The soprano who was so impressive last season in recital at the Park Avenue Armory seemed at sea in her surprisingly brief appearances that evening with the OAE. She began uncomfortably with a mezzo aria from Handel’s Alcina and concluded the first half with “Da tempeste,” the same bravura aria from Giulio Cesare that Lee had offered with Juilliard415. However, Bullock’s coloratura proved dully efficient rather than dazzling. One wondered if this aria might have been included to remind audience members that Bullock will soon appear at the Met as the same Egyptian queen in John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra?
She spoke to the audience about her choice to perform Barbara Strozzi’s “Che si può fare?” yet despite an eloquent Sergio Bucheli on the lute, Bullock made little of the words and sounded distressingly hooty. Her brief aria from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen was pleasant enough, but it was awkwardly placed between two fizzy orchestral pieces by Lully and Rameau. French baroque reappeared in Bullock’s encore, a swift ditty from Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Céphale et Procris. Never before have I experienced a singer reading their encore from a score: a disappointing end to a dispiriting evening.
Christie has taught us to expect better. LAF will later this spring tour to twenty-one U.S. cities, including New York, on April 6 with an all-Vivaldi program featuring young violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte; however, Christie will not be on board. But his fans can dive into hours and hours of music performed by him and LAF at home, thanks to the recent release of a deluxe box set containing their entire Erato catalog. Sixty-one CDs can be had for less than $200—the baroque bargain of the decade!
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