Saturday 10 October 2009 7.00pm & 9.00pm
Barbican Hall
Purcell
Dido and Aeneas
concert version
after the show staged by Deborah Warner and co-produced by the Wiener
Festwochen, the Opéra-Comique and the Nederlandse Opera
Malena Ernman Dido
Luca Pisaroni Aeneas
Judith van Wanroij Belinda
Hilary Summers Sorceress
Lina Markeby Second Woman
Céline Ricci First Witch
Hanna Bayodi-Hirt Second Witch
Marc Mauillon Spirit
Ben Davies Sailor
Les Arts Florissants
William Christie conductor
Julien Mignot/Virgin Classics
These concerts are part of a series of programmes
between London and Paris co-produced by the Barbican
Centre, the Salle Pleyel and the Cité de la Musique on the
occasion of the 30th anniversary of Les Arts Florissants.
Relax and enjoy a drink and live music in our Lates bar on
Level 1 after this evening’s concert.
introduction
Les Arts Florissants at 30
What a difference a generation makes. In the past 30 years, the world of Baroque music-making has been transformed.
Musicians had for a while been acquiring the skills of playing old instruments and rediscovering former playing styles, but it
was only during the 1970s that these made a major impact on the wider public. Of course there had been pioneers before
this: a whole generation of enthusiasts and researchers had explored old repertory, and Arnold Dolmetsch had played his
clavichord in candlelit London drawing rooms to the delight of George Bernard Shaw and Percy Grainger. But this was
essentially an esoteric activity – until a new generation of players and conductors launched themselves into the re-creation of
Baroque ensembles in the 1970s.
William Christie’s achievement with his French group Les Arts Florissants from 1979 onwards has been an outstanding part of
this revival, for it grew out of a repertory that many had thought inaccessible – the distant world of the French Baroque, with
its rich and dense texts, its complex ornamentation and rhetoric, and its unfamiliar emotional language. What Christie and
his young ensemble achieved in spectacular fashion was to show how, when performed with penetrating understanding and
vivid communication, this music could be made as available and exciting as any on offer. From Charpentier (who gave the
ensemble its name) and Lully through to Rameau, Les Arts Florissants lit up this music and brought it to life with unparalleled
success.
Christie’s ensemble has moved from the French Baroque into Handel and Purcell, Monteverdi and Landi, and beyond that to
Haydn and Mozart. It has gained a huge following for its fresh insights into Haydn’s The Creation and Monteverdi’s Vespers,
and its staged operas here at the Barbican – the fantastical, video-dominated production of Rameau’s Les Paladins and Luc
Bondy’s severely intense staging of Handel’s Hercules – have been among the highlights of our output.
So it is appropriate that this anniversary season celebrates the historic achievement of Les Arts Florissants with opera
(Purcell’s immortal Dido and Aeneas), oratorio (Handel’s rarely performed Susanna) and the French choral motets that the
group has made its own. And it is also entirely typical of its work with younger artists that for two of these anniversary
concerts, William Christie hands the baton on to directors of the next generation, Jonathan Cohen and Paul Agnew. Like the
great music of the past, Les Arts Florissants will continue to reinvent itself as it looks towards the next 30 years.
Nicholas Kenyon
Managing Director
Les Arts Florissants
30th Anniversary
Celebration
William Christie and his ensemble present
an exciting and diverse musical showcase
celebrating their 30th anniversary
Sun 18 Oct 09 7.30pm
LSO St Luke’s
Jonathan Cohen conducts
Haydn’s Symphony No 80 and
music by Mozart and Gluck.
Returns only
Sun 8 Nov 09 7.30pm
Union Chapel
Talented British conductor and
tenor Paul Agnew leads this
performance of Monteverdi’s
Sixth Book of Madrigals.
Sun 25 Oct 09 7pm
A performance of Handel’s
rarely-heard oratorio Susanna
with soloists including William
Burden, Alan Ewing and
Sophie Karthäuser.
Thu 26 Nov 09 7.30pm
Grand Motets by Lully, Rameau,
Desmarest and Campra with
soloists including Patricia
Petibon and Toby Spence.
Watch video interviews and listen to music clips
at www.greatperformers.org.uk
Box Office 0845 120 7557
The Barbican is
provided by the
City of London
Corporation
programme note
Henry Purcell (1659–95)
Dido and Aeneas (?1689)
Dido and Aeneas is Purcell’s single most famous work.
Familiar to audiences long before the rediscovery in recent
decades of Monteverdi and Handel, it is also the best-known
opera to have been composed before Mozart. And for
good measure it is probably the world’s favourite opera
in English.
These are heavy burdens for such a relatively small work to
bear, and the weight of them has undoubtedly distorted
perceptions of its place in the composer’s output. In Purcell’s
time through-composed opera, in which the entire text
was sung, was very rare in England, where the dominant
musico-dramatic form mixed music with speech. This latter
type of opera (known today by the term ‘semi-opera’) was
the one that was regularly seen on the professional stage
and carried the most prestige, and it was on Purcell’s own
semi-operas – Dioclesian, King Arthur, The Fairy Queen
and The Indian Queen – that his reputation as a theatre
composer was built. Dido and Aeneas was composed for
more intimate surroundings, and those few of Purcell’s
contemporaries who knew it did not even consider it to be
among his most important works.
The idea, too, that in it Purcell was making a brave but vain
attempt to forge a new type of English opera is a dubious
one, especially when one remembers that all his semioperas were composed after Dido. Purcell, no less than any
4
other opera composer, was an entirely practical musician
and this, it seems, was a one-off work served up for a
particular set of circumstances that were not repeated. What
those exact circumstances were, however, are far from clear.
For many years it was accepted that the premiere took place
in 1689 at a girls’ boarding school in Chelsea run by the
dancing master and choreographer Josias Priest, and that
this essentially amateur production, performed by teenage
girls, was the only one in Purcell’s lifetime. Such a
performance could account for the work’s brevity, its
small role for Aeneas, and possibly many aspects of the
treatment of the story as well. It also presents a pleasing
conjectural image of Priest inviting some of his influential
London theatre friends along, and of them being sufficiently
impressed with what they heard to ask Purcell to write for the
public stage. It may be no coincidence that his theatrical
career kicked off in earnest the following year, with his first
semi-opera, Dioclesian.
That this performance took place is certain since the earliest
surviving copy tells us so, but this is a score that dates from
more than 40 years after the composer’s death, and does
not say that the Chelsea production was the first. More
worryingly, it is incomplete and shows the scars of a more
complicated performance history, one that was brief and
brutal. We know, for instance, that the 1689 production had
programme note
an allegorical prologue, for which the music is lost. We also
know that in 1700 and 1704 the London theatre manager
Thomas Betterton had the opera broken up and performed
as a series of musical interludes in a production of Measure
for Measure, accommodating it to the purposes of
Shakespeare’s text with some skill but reordering it along the
way and doing who knows what else besides. Such freehandedness with existing texts – even Shakespeare’s – was
by no means unusual at the time, and the procedure did at
least provide Dido with almost its only professional staging in
200 years, but how much this tinkering affected later
transmission of the work is not known. And in recent years
the possibility had been mooted by some scholars that Dido
is older than that, and may have been performed privately
at court in the early 1680s. The evidence put forward is
circumstantial rather than positive, but it gives us cause to
think again, for what if even the 1689 performance – and
therefore the score as we know it – was itself much altered
from an earlier version?
In the end, of course, such considerations are of little
consequence beside the effect of the work on the listener,
and here its reputation really does speak for itself. For even
those writers down the years who have seen it as flawed,
ridiculed its libretto or been exasperated by what it is not
rather than by what it is, have only found themselves
commenting at all because of the compelling quality of
Purcell’s music. For all its perceived faults Dido and Aeneas,
transcendently beautiful and noble, seems unlikely to lose its
status as the best-loved of all Baroque operas.
Whatever the difficulties of establishing the opera’s
provenance, it is a far easier task to determine where it
comes from in stylistic terms. Though the semi-spoken
masque had been the favoured form of musical drama in
England throughout the 17th century, Dido and Aeneas was
not the only through-composed English opera of its time. In
the early 1680s Venus and Adonis, an all-sung masque by
Purcell’s teacher John Blow, had been performed before the
court, and the parallels between it and Dido are striking, not
least in similarities of storyline and the division of both
dramas into a prologue and three acts lasting just over an
hour in total. Significantly, perhaps, Venus and Adonis was
revived at Priest’s school in 1684. In 1685 Albion and
Albanius, an opera with words by John Dryden and music
by the imported composer Louis Grabu, was performed in
London, introducing English audiences to the musical
manners of French tragic opera, and the following year
the real thing arrived in the form of a production of Lully’s
tragédie-lyrique, Cadmus et Hermione. The French
operatic style, with its flexible and expressive species of
vocal declamation, cannot have failed to make a strong
5
programme note
impression on a sensitive handler of text such as Purcell,
while Dido’s formal pattern – successive units in the
sequence recitative–air–chorus–dance – also owed much
to French models.
Dido and Aeneas fits well into its literary context, too. The
story of the love between the Trojan hero Aeneas and the
Carthaginian queen Dido, and of her subsequent suicide
when he leaves to fulfil his destiny as founder of Rome,
would have been familiar to the educated English classes
from Book IV of Virgil’s epic poem Aeneid, which they could
have studied in Latin lessons or read in one of the several
translations that had appeared during the 16th and 17th
centuries. The opera’s librettist, Nahum Tate, had himself
previously tackled the subject in a play, in which he acted
upon his friends’ exhortations to discourage comparison of
his own talents with those of Virgil by changing the setting
and the names of the characters, producing by this process a
drama entitled Brutus of Alba. That he felt able to show his
hand more openly in Dido and Aeneas not only hints at the
persistence of his admiration for the original, but also, one
suspects, the more private surroundings in which the opera
was heard.
6
The contribution to Purcell’s opera of the Dublin-born Tate
has long come in for criticism, but in many ways his treatment
has been harsh. He was certainly no great versifier, despite
the fact that he was later to become Poet Laureate, but even
a superior contemporary literary figure such as Dryden
recognised that sung texts had their own requirements and
were better off avoiding the ‘lofty, figurative and majestical’.
Tate was an experienced adapter of Shakespeare, and here
he made a good job of streamlining the existing story to
make an hour’s sung entertainment. The structure of the
drama – three acts, each divided into two scenes – is clear
and concise, and his verse never defeats the ever-resourceful
Purcell. Furthermore, he carefully alters the slant of the
drama, making it less conventionally heroic and more
human. Virgil’s Aeneas spends a winter of lustful dalliance
with Dido before the gods remind him that his true course
lies elsewhere; when he leaves out of duty, the rejected
queen stabs herself as if in a fit of pique. Tate’s version
emphasises Aeneas’s weakness and hypocrisy, letting him be
tricked into leaving after just one night by a group of
malicious witches invented for the purpose by Tate himself,
surely under the influence of Macbeth. Dido is now the
programme note
sympathetic figure; her death is a noble and non-violent one,
and the exact nature of the couple’s love is scarcely alluded
to. The implicit message becomes, among other things, a
warning as to the essential untrustworthiness of men – very
suitable for a girls’ school!
to his departure, and his subsequent shamefaced
appearance before her in Act 3, are among the most
expressive recitatives in the opera.
Moments such as these, as well as numerous others
throughout the opera, reveal just what a powerful master of
Of course, the dignity of Dido’s death arises more from
dramatic word-setting Purcell was, but Dido and Aeneas
would not enjoy the popularity it does if it did not appeal on
Purcell’s music than from Tate’s verse. The final scene, from
other levels as well – in its tunefulness, evocative power, and,
the stricken recitative (‘Thy hand Belinda’), through the
yes, its conciseness. Short it may be, but it encompasses
famous lament spun memorably over a resigned,
descending ground bass, to the final heartbreaking chorus is much, from courtly rejoicing in the Triumphing Dance of Act 1
to rumbustiousness in the Act 3 sailors’ farewell to the curious
distinguished by music whose power to move never fails, no
mixture of humour and grotesque that characterises the
matter how often one hears it. But Dido’s heroic spirit has
witches’ scenes, all of which come together to make what
been established from her appearance in the first scene,
must be one of the most completely satisfying hours of opera
when she confides her unnameable torment in another
ever composed. Holst could not have foreseen the advent of
ground-bass air (‘Ah! Belinda’). Her surrender to love is
Benjamin Britten when he described Dido in 1927 as ‘the only
reluctant, and if she takes any real joy in it, she never
perfect English opera’, but even Britten, Purcell’s great latterexpresses it directly – it is only her courtiers who rejoice.
day challenger and himself a distinguished conductor of the
Aeneas, by contrast, is a sketchy figure in this opera, not even
work, had to stand back and admire the opera he
enjoying the benefit of a single air in which to declare himself.
considered to be ‘unquestionably a masterpiece’.
But Purcell does not forget him, and while he only awards
Programme note © Lindsay Kemp
him recitatives, they are of high quality. Indeed, Aeneas’s
chastened anticipation at the end of Act 2 of Dido’s reaction
Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Sharp Print Limited;
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performance. In accordance with the requirements of the licensing authority, sitting or standing
in any gangway is not permitted. Smoking is not permitted anywhere on the Barbican premises.
No eating or drinking is allowed in the auditorium. No cameras, tape recorders or any other
recording equipment may be taken into the hall.
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7
synopsis
Synopsis
Tate’s economical libretto assumes considerable prior knowledge
of the story on the part of listeners, and presents many of the
episodes of the story without explanation. He does not tell us, for
instance, that Dido has recently been widowed, or that Aeneas,
a Trojan prince who has escaped the Sack of Troy and is bound
for Italy to found Rome, has been driven into Carthage by a storm
at sea.
Act 1
The Palace
Dido, Queen of Carthage, confesses to her sister and confidante
Belinda that she is suffering a torment whose cause she cannot
reveal. Belinda suggests that the answer lies with her handsome
‘Trojan guest’. Dido is reluctant to admit as much, but is further
encouraged by Belinda and her fellow courtiers, who insist that
Aeneas reciprocates her feelings. When he appears, she finally
gives in to love, urged on once more by Belinda. The act ends with
general rejoicing and a Triumphing Dance.
Act 2
The Cave
The Sorceress calls together her attendant witches, and outlines
her spiteful plans for Dido’s downfall: one of the witches, disguised
as the gods’ messenger Mercury, will appear to Aeneas and
remind him of the destiny that awaits him in Rome. In the meantime
they will disrupt the lovers’ hunting by conjuring a storm.
The Grove
Dido and her court are resting after the hunt. Belinda sings of the
idyllic surroundings, and a Second Woman recalls the fate of the
fabled hunter Acteon, killed by his own hounds after being turned
into a stag. Aeneas enters, proudly displaying the head of a
vanquished boar, at which point the storm breaks and the entire
court hurries back to town. As they leave, Aeneas is detained by the
false spirit, who orders his immediate departure for Italy. Aeneas
submits, but is horrified at the thought of breaking the news to
Dido.
Act 3
The Ships
Aeneas’s sailors sing and dance with joy at their departure. The
watching Sorceress and Witches celebrate their malice in songs
and dances of their own (referring to Dido by her alternative
name, Elissa), during which they plot another storm, this time for
Aeneas and his fleet.
The Palace
Dido, having presumably seen the sailors’ preparations, expresses
her feelings of foreboding to Belinda. A sorrowful Aeneas
appears and tries to explain himself, but Dido angrily rejects him,
even after he has weakly promised to stay. As Aeneas leaves, Dido
prepares for the only course left to her – to embrace death.
Synopsis © Lindsay Kemp
8
about the performers
About tonight’s performers
dans l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur
as well as Officier dans l’Ordre des
Arts et des Lettres. He was elected to
the Académie des Beaux-Arts in
November 2008.
William Christie conductor
William Christie’s pioneering work as
harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist
and teacher has led to a renewed
interest in Baroque music in France.
Born in America, he studied at
Harvard and Yale Universities before
moving to France in 1971, where he
founded Les Arts Florissants eight
years later. With the ensemble he has
explored many neglected or forgotten
works, both sacred and secular. As well
as championing the French Baroque,
ranging from Charpentier to Rameau,
via Couperin, Mondonville, Campra
and Montéclair, he is acclaimed in
Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, Mozart
and Haydn.
In the opera house, he has worked with
many renowned directors, including
Jean-Marie Villégier, Robert Carsen,
Alfredo Arias, Jorge Lavelli, Graham
As a guest conductor William Christie
regularly appears at Glyndebourne
and with the Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra, as well as conducting
Zurich Opera in works by Gluck,
Rameau and Handel, and the Opéra
National de Lyon in Così fan tutte and
The Marriage of Figaro.
He is also committed to the
professional development of young
artists, and many of the music directors
of today’s Baroque ensembles began
their careers with Les Arts Florissants.
In 2002 he created Le Jardin des Voix,
an academy for young singers in
Caen, whose first three seasons
generated considerable international
interest.
As a conductor and harpsichordist,
William Christie has made over 70
recordings, many of which have
received awards.
William Christie acquired French
nationality in 1995. He is an Officier
Mats Bäcker
Pascal Gély
Vick, Adrian Noble, Andrei Serban
and Luc Bondy. Last year Les Arts
Florissants began a collaboration with
the Teatro Real de Madrid, where the
ensemble will perform all the
Monteverdi operas over coming
seasons.
Malena Ernman mezzo-soprano
Swedish mezzo-soprano Malena
Ernman is one of the leading artists of
her generation. She studied in
Orléans, London and Stockholm.
Her operatic repertoire ranges from
Monteverdi and Cavalli via Mozart
and Rossini to Sven-David Sandström
and Philippe Boesmans, and she has
sung at leading opera houses and
festivals throughout Europe, including
the Staatsoper Berlin, Royal Opera
Stockholm, Glyndebourne Festival, La
Monnaie in Brussels, Opéra National
de Paris and the Salzburg and Aix-en9
about the performers
This season she sings Angelina
(La Cenerentola) in Stockholm and
Frankfurt as well as appearing as Dido
in Paris and Vienna.
On the concert platform Malena
Ernman has worked with conductors
such as Rinaldo Alessandrini, Herbert
Blomstedt, Frans Brüggen, Gustavo
Dudamel, Philippe Herreweghe, John
Nelson, Arnold Östman, Carlo Rizzi,
Esa-Pekka Salonen and David Zinman,
in repertoire ranging from sacred
works by Bach and Mozart to Berio’s
Folksongs and new music, including
Sven-David Sandström’s High Mass
and the world premiere of Fabian
10
Müller’s Nachtgesänge, both of which
she has recorded. In recital she has
appeared in Tokyo, Wigmore Hall and
elsewhere.
Malena Ernman’s discography
includes the recital discs Cabaret,
My Love and Songs in Season.
Marco Borggreve
Provence festivals. She has worked
with René Jacobs in Berlin, Brussels,
Innsbruck, Vienna and Paris in roles
such as Nerone (Agrippina), Roberto
(Scarlatti’s Griselda), Diana (Cavalli’s
La Calisto) and Nerone (The
Coronation of Poppaea); with William
Christie, singing Lichas (Handel’s
Hercules), Donna Elvira (Don
Giovanni) and Dido; with Daniel
Barenboim, as Cherubino (The
Marriage of Figaro) and Zerlina (Don
Giovanni); and made her Salzburg
Festival debut as Annio (La clemenza
di Tito) under the baton of Nikolaus
Harnoncourt.
Luca Pisaroni bass-baritone
Luca Pisaroni grew up in Parma and
studied in Milan, Buenos Aires and
New York. He made his debut in the
title-role of The Marriage of Figaro in
Klagenfurt in 2001 and his Salzburg
Festival debut the following year. He
has frequently appeared with the
Vienna State Opera in roles ranging
from Gluck via Mozart to Rossini.
He regularly performs with leading
opera companies in Europe and North
America, including Figaro, Leporello
(Don Giovanni) and Melisso (Alcina) at
the Opéra Bastille, Figaro at the
Metropolitan Opera and the Théâtre
des Champs-Élysées, Guglielmo (Così
fan tutte) for Glyndebourne Festival,
Alidoro (La Cenerentola) in Santiago
de Chile, Achillas (Giulio Cesare) for
Opera Colorado and La Monnaie in
Brussels, Leporello and Colline (La
bohème) at the Teatro Real in Madrid
and a staged version of Bach’s St John
Passion at the Théâtre du Châtelet.
Highlights of this season include Luca
Pisaroni’s Carnegie Hall recital debut
and Mozart’s Figaro for the
Metropolitan Opera and De
Nederlandse Opera. In concert he
sings Mozart’s Requiem under Roberto
Abbado and Beethoven’s Symphony
No. 9 under Michael Tilson Thomas.
In concert he has sung Hasse’s
I Pellegrini al Sepolcro di Nostro
Signore at the Salzburg Easter Festival,
Cherubini’s Missa solemnis under the
baton of Riccardo Muti, Schumann’s
Das Paradies und die Peri with Sir
Simon Rattle, Michael Haydn’s
Requiem in C minor under Ivor Bolton
and Mozart’s Mass in C minor under
Marc Minkowski and his ‘Coronation’
Mass and Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso
under Jean-Christophe Spinosi.
Luca Pisaroni’s discography includes
DVDs of many Mozart operas and he
also features on Cecilia Bartoli’s recent
recording, Maria.
Judith van Wanroij soprano
Dutch soprano Judith van Wanroij
initially read Law, before studying
singing in Amsterdam and The Hague.
In 2003 she won first prize in the
oratorio competition Erna
Spoorenberg Vocalisten Presentatie.
In concert she has worked extensively
in Europe with such conductors as
Frans Brüggen, William Christie,
Emmanuel Krivine, Jésus LópezCobos, Christophe Rousset, Skip
Sempé, Edo de Waart, Kenneth Weiss
and Jaap van Zweden.
She made her opera debut in the titlerole of Offenbach’s La Périchole and
her repertoire ranges from Baroque
works by Monteverdi, Rebel, Martín y
Soler and Rameau via Mozart to
Puccini, Wagner, Krenek, Ravel,
Richard Strauss and Maderna. In 2005
she was invited to take part in William
Christie’s young artist programme Le
Jardin des Voix, which resulted in a
highly successful tour of Europe and
the USA with Les Arts Florissants.
Judith van Wanroij has recently sung
Despina (Così fan tutte) at the Aix-enProvence Festival, a role she will revive
for Luxembourg Opera next year,
Servilia (La clemenza di Tito) at the
Opéra de Lyon, as well as tonight’s
role in Paris, Vienna and Amsterdam.
Future engagements include Ilia
(Idomeneo) at Opéra de Nancy and in
Amsterdam, Virtue/Drusilla (The
Coronation of Poppaea) at the Gran
Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, the titlerole in Grétry’s Andromaque at the
Schwetzingen Festival and Montpellier
Opera, Sidonie/Lucinde (Gluck’s
Armide) for Opera Lafayette in the
USA, Female Chorus (The Rape of
Lucretia) for Nantes Opera and Elvira
(Don Giovanni) in Amsterdam.
Claire Newman-Williams
about the performers
Hilary Summers contralto
Born in Newport, South Wales, Hilary
Summers enjoys a varied career
encompassing repertoire from the 12th
to the 21st centuries. A true contralto
with a wide vocal range, she has
excited the attention of many
contemporary composers, creating the
roles of Stella in Elliott Carter’s opera
What Next?, Irma in Peter Eötvös’s
opera Le Balcon and the lead role in
Michael Nyman’s Facing Goya.
She has also performed Boulez’s
Le marteau sans maître throughout
Europe with Pierre Boulez, her
recording of which won a Grammy
Award. Last season, as part of the
celebrations for Boulez’s 80th birthday
she sang Le visage nuptial under his
direction. In Britain she has forged a
special relationship with Michael
Nyman, recording soundtracks to
11
about the performers
Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro)
and Third Lady (The Magic Flute) for
the Armonico Consort, Innkeeper’s
Wife/Woodpecker (The Cunning Little
Vixen) for Opera Project, Zephyrus
(Mozart’s Apollo and Hyacinth) and
Lisinga (Gluck’s Le Cinesi) for Bampton
Classical Opera, and Meg Page
(Falstaff) for Opera Project.
many of his film scores. She has also
worked frequently with the composer
Joby Talbot.
In the concert hall she has sung The
Dream of Gerontius and Sea Pictures
under the late Vernon Handley.
Her many recordings include Handel’s
Messiah with King’s College,
Cambridge, Handel’s Lotario with
Alan Curtis, Britten’s A Midsummer
Night’s Dream under Sir Colin Davis,
Rossini’s Petite messe solennelle and
Nyman’s Six Celan Songs.
Lina Markeby mezzo-soprano
Lina Markeby was born and studied
in Sweden, before attending the
Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
She now continues her studies with
Ameral Gunson.
After graduating in 2006 she sang
Idamante (Idomeneo) for Chelsea
Opera Group, as well as in Mozart
opera galas with the Monteverdi Choir.
In 2007 she sang Third Sprite (Rusalka)
and the title-role in Peter Brook’s La
Tragédie de Carmen at the Wexford
Festival, Messenger/Nymph
(Monteverdi’s Orfeo) at Drottningholm
and Arcane (Handel’s Teseo) for
English Touring Opera, as well as
working with William Christie and
Les Arts Florissants.
Last year she sang Dorabella (Così
fan tutte) for Opera by Definition,
12
Future highlights include Dorabella
and Cherubino for l’Atélier Lyrique de
Tourcoing, conducted by Jean-Claude
Malgoire.
Craig W. Smith
Hilary Summers has also worked
extensively with leading exponents of
Baroque music, including Christopher
Hogwood, Paul McCreesh, Robert
King, Christian Curnyn, Christophe
Rousset, Thomas Hengelbrock,
Andrew Manze, Sir John Eliot
Gardiner and William Christie. In
recent years she has appeared as
Mrs Sedley (Peter Grimes) for
Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the
Washerwoman (Rob Zuidam’s Rages
d’amour) at De Nederlandse Opera
and Hippolyta (A Midsummer Night’s
Dream) for the Teatro Real, Madrid.
Céline Ricci soprano
Born in Florence, Céline Ricci studied in
Paris and at the Guildhall School of
Music & Drama. In 2002 she was
selected by William Christie for his
singing academy, Les Jardin des Voix.
In 2005, she was named one of
about the performers
opera’s promising new talents by
Opernwelt magazine.
This season includes two productions
with William Christie – as well as
tonight’s Dido she will sing in
Charpentier’s Actéon in New York. She
also sings in Dido and Aeneas on tour
with the Philharmonia Baroque under
Nicholas McGegan.
Mazzoni’s Aminta, il re pastore. The
production of Charpentier’s Les
plaisirs de Versailles in which she
appeared at the Opéra Royal de
Versailles was filmed for DVD.
Her discography includes a number of
CDs and two DVDs and she recently
signed an exclusive recording contract.
Céline Ricci made her debut in 2001 in
the role of Vagaus (Vivaldi’s Juditha
Triumphans) for Montpellier Opera.
She later joined Les Arts Florissants
under William Christie on a European
tour of Rameau’s Les Indes galantes.
She has also appeared as Polissena
(Handel’s Radamisto) under Martin
Haselbock.
Her opera and concert performances
have included the title-role in Mozart’s
Il re pastore at the Théâtre des
Champs-Élysées and on tour, arias
by Porpora and Weber with the
Dresden Philharmonic, Vivaldi’s La
Griselda at the Festival d’Ambronay,
a tour of The Magic Flute, The
Marriage of Figaro for Montpellier
Opera, Paisiello’s Il re Teodoro in
Venezia at the Festival Radio France of
Montpellier, Rameau’s La naissance
d’Osiris, Lully’s Amadis, Rebel’s Ulysse,
Martín y Soler’s Ifigenia in Aulide and
Hanna Bayodi-Hirt soprano
Hanna Bayodi-Hirt studied at the Paris
Conservatoire and in 2003 she won
the Clermont-Ferrand oratorio
competition. The same year she made
her debut, in Rameau’s Les Boréades
conducted by William Christie, which
she performed in Caen, New York
and London.
Niquet, Handel’s Hercules under
William Christie, toured Asia and
Europe with Rameau’s Les Paladins,
has sung in Monteverdi’s Orfeo and
Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria in Madrid
and The Marriage of Figaro in Lille.
On the concert stage her repertoire
has included such works as
Boccherini’s Stabat mater, Handel’s
Nine German Arias and the title-role in
Scarlatti’s La Giuditta and she has
appeared at festivals in Paris, Sablé,
Ambronay, Utrecht, Montpellier and
Bremen and has given recitals in
Washington and Paris’s Cité de la
Musique.
Among Hanna Bayodi-Hirt’s
recordings are acclaimed versions of
King Arthur, Desmarest’s Grands
motets and De profundis with Le
Concert Spirituel and Bernier’s Les
nuits de Sceaux with Les Folies
Françoises. Her performance of
Médée has been released on DVD.
She has since sung in Charpentier’s
Médée, Lesueur’s Paul et Virginie and
Purcell’s King Arthur under Hervé
13
about the performers
Katia Feltrin
In the concert hall Marc Mauillon’s
repertoire ranges from Machaut via
Caccini, Moulinié and Monteverdi to
Mahler, Ravel and Korngold. He
frequently works with Jordi Savall and
such ensembles as Alla Francesca and
Doulce Mémoire.
His discography includes works by
Machaut, Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini
and sacred works by Charpentier.
Marc Mauillon baritone
The French baritone Marc Mauillon
performs a wide range of music, with a
particular emphasis on the Baroque.
He was a member of William Christie’s
Le Jardin des Voix in 2002 and
continues to perform regularly with
Les Arts Florissants, both live and on
record, including in Charpentier’s
Le jugement de Salomon, Lully’s
Armide, the current tour of Dido and
Aeneas and forthcoming concerts of
French grands motets in France and
here at the Barbican.
Other notable operatic performances
include Purcell’s King Arthur under
Hervé Niquet, The Magic Flute,
Così fan tutte, Poulenc’s Les mamelles
de Tirésias, Debussy’s Pelléas et
Melisande, Peter Eötvös’s Le Balcon
and Pascal Dusapin’s Roméo
et Juliette.
14
This season Marc Mauillon sings in
Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges for
Opéra de Nancy and Bernstein’s
Trouble in Tahiti, and will record and
perform on stage Monteverdi’s
Combattimento with Le Poème
Harmonique.
Ben Davies baritone
Ben Davies was born in London in 1976
and studied at the Royal Academy of
Music. His roles include Ubalde
(Gluck’s Armide) for the Buxton
Festival, Aeneas (Dido and Aeneas)
under Sir John Eliot Gardiner at Opéra
de Lyon, Judge (Korngold’s Das
Wunder der Heliane) under Vladimir
Jurowski, Guglielmo (Così fan tutte),
Bartolo and Antonio (The Marriage of
Figaro), Polyphemus (Acis and
Galatea), Bass (Purcell’s The Fairy
Queen), Amis (Milhaud’s Le pauvre
matelot), Private Willis (Iolanthe),
Marcello (La bohème) in scenes for
The Lesley Garrett Show for BBC
Television.
Recent concert performances have
included Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s
Christmas Oratorio, Fauré’s Requiem
and the St Matthew and St John
about the performers
Passions with Harry Christophers and
The Sixteen, Mozart’s Mass in C minor
and Purcell’s St Cecilia’s Day Ode
for Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli
Consort, the St John Passion with the
Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano
Giuseppe Verdi for Robert King, and
Mozart’s Solemn Vespers, Mass in C
minor and Requiem with Sir John Eliot
Gardiner and the English Baroque
Soloists.
Ben Davies recently made his
Wigmore Hall debut with Bach’s Italian
Cantata, Amore traditore. Other
notable performances include
Mozart’s concert aria Così dunque
tradisci for Harry Christophers and
the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic
Orchestra, Rutter’s Mass of the
Children in the Bridgewater Hall,
Verdi’s Requiem in Leeds Town Hall
and Bach’s solo cantata Ich habe
genug in the Sheldonian Theatre,
Oxford.
Future plans include the St Matthew
Passion with Harry Christophers and
Robert King, Messiah in Versailles and
the UK premiere of Hermann Suter’s
Le laudi.
Les Arts Florissants
The renowned vocal and instrumental
ensemble Les Arts Florissants was
founded in 1979 by William Christie,
and takes its name from an opera by
Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
Since the acclaimed production of Atys
by Lully at the Opéra Comique in Paris
in 1987, it has been in the field of opera
where Les Arts Florissants has found
most success. Notable productions
include works by Rameau (Les Indes
galantes in 1990 and 1999, Hippolyte
et Aricie in 1996, Les Boréades in 2003,
Les Paladins in 2004), Charpentier
(Médée in 1993 and 1994), Handel
(Orlando in 1993, Acis and Galatea in
1996, Semele in 1996, Alcina in 1999,
Hercules in 2004 and 2006), Purcell
(King Arthur in 1995, Dido and Aeneas
in 2006), Mozart (The Magic Flute in
1994, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at
the Opéra du Rhin in 1995) and
Monteverdi (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
at Aix-en-Provence in 2000, revived in
2002, L’incoronazione di Poppaea in
2005, and L’Orfeo at the Teatro Real
de Madrid in 2008).
Les Arts Florissants has an equally high
profile in the concert hall, giving
concert performances of operas
(Zoroastre and Les fêtes d’Hébé by
Rameau, Idomenée by Campra,
Jephté by Montéclair and L’Orfeo by
Rossi), as well as secular chamber
works (Actéon, Les plaisirs de
Versailles and La descente d’Orphée
aux Enfers by Charpentier and Dido
and Aeneas by Purcell) and sacred
music (grands motets by Rameau,
Mondonville and Desmarest) and
Handel oratorios.
The ensemble has an impressive
discography of over 70 CD recordings,
most recently Haydn’s The Creation. Its
most recent DVD is Il Sant’Alessio by
Stefano Landi, filmed at the Théâtre de
Caen, where, for the past 15 years, the
ensemble has been artist-in-residence.
Les Arts Florissants also tours widely
within France, and is a frequent
ambassador for French culture
abroad, regularly appearing at the
Brooklyn Academy, the Lincoln Center
in New York, the Barbican Centre and
the Vienna Festival.
Les Arts Florissants receive financial
support from the Ministry of Culture and
Communication, the City of Caen and the
Région Basse-Normandie. Their sponsor is
Imerys. Les Arts Florissants are artists in
residence at the Théâtre de Caen.
15
orchestra and choir list
Les Arts Florissants
Musical Director
William Christie
Catherine Girard
Michelle Sauvé
Executive Manager
Luc Bouniol-Laffont
Viola
Galina Zinchenko
Simon Heyerick
Assistant to Musical
Director
Jonathan Cohen
Orchestra
Violin I
Hiro Kurosaki leader
Myriam Gevers
Mihoko Kimura
George Willms
Violin II
Sophie GeversDemoures
Recorder
Sébastien Marq
Michelle Tellier
Soprano
Maud Gnidzaz
Violaine Lucas
Brigitte Pelote
Isabelle Sauvageot
Sheena Wolstencroft
Oboe
Pier Luigi Fabretti
Michel Henry
Cello
Emmanuel Balssa
basso continuo
Alix Verzier
Bassoon
Claude Wassmer
High Tenor
Sean Clayton
Jean-Xavier
Combarieu
Bruno Renhold
Marcio Soares
Holanda
Theorbo
Brian Feehan
basso continuo
Viola da gamba
Anne-Marie Lasla
basso continuo
Harpsichord
William Christie
basso continuo
Violone
Jonathan Cable
basso continuo
Tenor
Thibaut Lenaerts
Nicolas Maire
Jean-Yves Ravoux
Michael-Loughlin Smith
Bass
Laurent Collobert
David Le Monnier
Damian Whiteley
Chorus Master
François Bazola
Language Coach
Alan Woodhouse
Répétiteur
Paolo Zanzu
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