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WILLIAM CHRISTIE
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Although born in Buffalo, William Christie has been French since 1995. While in the USA he studied the piano, organ and harpsichord, and met Ralph Kirkpatrick who reinforced his love of French art, with the result that he settled in Paris in 1971. Here he continued his harpsichord studies with Kenneth Gilbert and David Fuller, and played with the Five Centuries Ensemble whose repertoire included the most contemporary works, before playing organ and harpsichord in René Jacobs' Concerto Vocale.
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It was in 1979 that his career really took wing, when he founded Les Arts Florissants, an ensemble with whom he was able to explore English, French and Italian music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Success followed in both concert halls and opera houses, and it is undoubtedly William Christie who stage-managed the revival of French tragédie lyrique on stage. Together with the producers Jean-Marie Villégier, Robert Carsen, Alfredo Arias, Pier Luigi Pizzi and Jorge Lavelli, he is reponsible for some of the most remarkable operatic productions of the last two decades of this century, starting with Lully's Atys which had audiences enraptured at the Salle Favart in 1987.
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William Christie is regularly invited to conduct major orchestras, and has twice been guest conductor at Glyndebourne for productions of Handel operas (Theodora, 1996, and Rodelinda, 1998). French music remains, however, his preferred repertoire, and the revival of composers such as Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Rameau, Couperin and Mondonville owes much to the American who took over the early music class at the Paris Conservatoire in 1982. He retained this post until 1995, just two years after being awarded the Légion d'Honneur.
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It is no accident that Les Arts Florissants, founded in 1979 by the harpsichordist and conductor William Christie, have in their first twenty years of existence become one of the best-loved orchestral and vocal ensembles in baroque music. Their concert repertoire is seemingly inexhaustible, including Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Campra, Moulinié, Mondonville, Montéclair and Bouzignac, and they have introduced much forgotten music to the public. Their most spectacular successes have been in stage productions, from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Monteverdi's Il Ballo delle Ingrate, produced by Pierre Barrat for the Opéra du Rhin in 1983, to Hippolyte et Aricie by Rameau performed at the Palais Garnier in 1996.
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This last provided the occasion for further collaboration with the exceptionally talented producer Jean-Marie Villégier, who has been responsible for a number of their greatest successes such as Lully's Atys (1987), Le Malade imaginaire by Molière/Charpentier at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris (1990), La Fée Urgèle by Duni and Favart (Salle Favart, 1991) and Médée by Charpentier (Caen, 1993). The Aix-en-Provence festival provided the scene for further triumphs such as Purcell's The Fairy Queen, Les Indes galantes and Castor et Pollux by Rameau, Mozart's Die Zauberflöte and Handel's Semele. Les Arts Florissants, who have been resident artists in Caen, in the Basse-Normandie region since 1990, are regularly invited by the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and have greatly contributed to the dissemination of French music throughout the world.
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