Les Arts Florissants

A group of singers and instrumentalists devoted to baroque music , faithful to the interpretation of ancient instruments, Les Arts Florissants is one of the most famous formations in the world. They were founded in 1979, and have since been directed by Franco-American harpsichordist and conductor William Christie . Since 2007, the British tenor Paul Agnew is his deputy. The Arts Florissants, whose name is borrowed from a little opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, imposed in the French musical landscape a hitherto unknown repertoire (exhuming in particular the treasures of the National Library of France): not only the Great French century, but more generally the European music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Since Atys de Lully at the Opéra Comique in 1987, recreated triumphantly in May 2011, it is the lyrical scene that assured them the greatest successes: with Rameau ( Les Indes galantes, Hippolyte and Aricie, Les Boréades , Les Paladins, Plateaus ), Lully and Charpentier ( Medea , David and Jonathas , The flourishing Arts, Armida ) as Handel ( Orlando , Acis and Galatea , Semele , Alcina , Serse , Hercules , The Allegro, he Moderato ed il Penseroso ), Purcell (King Arthur , Dido and Aeneas , The Fairy Queen ), Mozart ( Die Zauberflöte , Die Entführung aus dem Serail ), or the lyrical trilogy of Monteverdi, but also composers more rarely interpreted as Landi ( Il Sant'Alessio ), Cesti ( Il Tito) , Campra ( The Venetian Festivals ) or Hérold ( Zampa ). Les Arts Florissants productions are often associated with big names in the scene: Jean-Marie Villégier, Robert Carsen, Adrian Noble, Andrei Serban, Luc Bondy, Deborah Warner, Jérôme Deschamps and Macha Makeïeff - as well as choreographers such as Béatrice Massin, Ana Yepes, Jirí Kylián, Bianca Li, Trisha Brown, Robyn Orlin, José Montalvo, Françoise Denieau and Dominique Hervieu.