Carnegie Hall

William Christie—harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist, and teacher—is the inspiration behind one of the most exciting musical ventures of the last 40 years. A pioneer in the rediscovery of Baroque music, he has introduced the repertoire of 17th- and 18th-century France to a wide audience around the globe. Born in Buffalo, and educated at Harvard and Yale, he has lived in France since 1971. The turning point in his career came in 1979, when he founded Les Arts Florissants.

As director of this vocal and instrumental ensemble, Mr. Christie soon made his mark as both a musician and man of the theater, concert hall, and opera. Major public recognition came in 1987 with the production of Lully’s Atys at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.

From Charpentier to Rameau through Couperin and Mondonville, Mr. Christie is the uncontested master of tragédie-lyrique as well as opéra-ballet, and he is just as comfortable with the French motet as with music of the court. But his affection for French music does not preclude him from exploring other European repertoires such as Monteverdi, Rossi, Scarlatti, Landi, Purcell, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, or J. S. Bach.

Notable among his most recent operatic works are Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Salzburg Festival, Rameau’s Platée at Theater an der Wien, Rameau’s Les Fêtes d’Hébé at the Opéra-Comique, Handel’s Partenope on international tour, and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at the Teatros del Canal in Madrid, Opéra Royal de Versailles, and Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.

As a guest conductor, Mr. Christie often appears alongside the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at such festivals as Glyndebourne and opera houses that include the Metropolitan Opera, Zurich Opera House, and Opéra National de Lyon.

Highlights of the 2023–2024 season included new productions of Charpentier’s Médée at the Opéra National de Paris, Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, and Handel’s Ariodante, as well as concert performances of J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion, Campra’s Requiem, Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ, and Italian arias with countertenors Hugh Cutting and Carlo Vistoli. The 2024–2025 season features the celebration of Mr. Christie’s 80th birthday, with an anniversary tour and a series of exceptional events.

Ana Vieira Leite began her musical journey at the Calouste Gulbenkian Conservatory in Braga, Portugal, at the age of six. In addition to her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, she holds a postgraduate degree from Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espectáculo in Porto. She later pursued training at the Haute École de Musique in Geneva.

Ms. Leite has won several prestigious awards, including the first prize at the Concurso Internacional de Música Terras de Santiago in 2018 and the Prémio Helena Sá e Costa in 2017. In 2020, she was awarded the first prize at the Concours International de Chant Baroque de Froville in France, and in 2021, she received second prize at the Prémio Jovens Músicos and the first prize at the Concurso da Fundação Rotária Portuguesa.

Throughout her career, she has benefited from the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Portugal), Fondation Colette Mosetti (Switzerland), and GDA Foundation (Portugal), which have been instrumental in advancing her artistic development.

Rebecca Leggett is a 2020 graduate of the Royal College of Music, where she was an Ian Evans Lombe Scholar. She previously completed her undergraduate studies at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, graduating with first class honors and winning the TCM Trust Silver Medal for Voice and the Alan J. Kirby Conducting Prize.

Ms. Leggett is passionate about early music and is one of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Rising Stars for 2023–2025. In spring, she perform J. S. Bach’s Easter Oratorio with the ensemble. She made her debut with Les Arts Florissants in 2023, singing in its Divine Hymns program. Her notable performances include J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion at the Concertgebouw, her Wigmore Hall debut with Arcangelo and Jonathan Cohen, Handel’s Messiah with Edward Higginbottom, and Haydn’s Nelson Mass with The Sixteen. Her recent stage highlights include playing Cupid in Blow’s Venus and Adonis at Blackheath Halls Opera and performing Monteverdi’s Lamento della ninfa during a UK tour with the Rambert Dance Company. In 2023, she was a finalist at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards and previously won the Coro Nuovo Young Musician of the Year in 2018.

She has also excelled in song recitals, winning the 2022 London Song Festival British Art-Song Competition, and has performed at the Lewes Song and Oxford Lieder festivals. She has given recitals with esteemed artists like countertenor Hugh Cutting and bass Brindley Sherratt.

Juliette Mey, winner of the Queen Elisabeth and Voix Nouvelles 2023 competitions, is a rising opera star. She is part of the 2022 Génération Opéra class, and a laureate of the Aix Festival Academy and the Raymond Duffaut Opera Young Talents Competition. Her vocal training began at the Maîtrise of the Toulouse, followed by advanced studies with Léa Pasquel at the Conservatoire Régional de Montpellier. In 2018, she joined the Pôle des Arts Baroque de Toulouse for a three-year stay.

Ms. Mey honed her craft with renowned mezzo-soprano Jeanne Piland in 2021. Currently, she studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. Her early career has included the title role of La Cenerentola at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Opéra de Rouen. She made her Paris Opera debut performing to music of Liszt during the ballet Mayerling at the Palais Garnier.

She has also collaborated with prominent ensembles such as Christophe Rousset’s Talens Lyriques, Ricercar Consort, and Opéra Orchestre National Montpellier Occitanie. Her talents have made her one of the most promising young voices in the operatic world.

Praised for his “winning singing and youthful bearing” (The New York Times), American tenor Richard Pittsinger is quickly establishing himself as a leading performer of both early and modern repertoire. His principal operatic roles to date include Céphale in Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Céphale et Procris with the Boston Early Music Festival, Aminta in Handel’s Atalanta with Juilliard Opera, Polinesso in Jonathan Dawe’s Being Ariodante at The Italian Academy, Orfeo in Rossi’s Orfeo, Lysander in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Juilliard Opera, and the Rocket in Laura Karpman’s Wilde Tales at Glimmerglass. Additional stage credits include Verdi’s Falstaff at the Aspen Music Festival and School, Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Virgil Thomson’s The Mother of Us All, Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, Rameau’s Platée, and Verdi’s Un giorno di regno.

Equally comfortable on the concert stage, Mr. Pittsinger has served as tenor soloist with Musica Sacra, ARTEK, Central City Chorus, The Cecilia Chorus of New York, the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph, and Julliard415. He has performed with such musicians as Paul Agnew, Louisa Muller, Christopher Alden, Mary Birnbaum, Avi Stein, Gilbert Blin, William Christie, Richard Egarr, Stephen Stubbs, Patrick Summers, Stephen Wadsworth, and Gary Wedow.

For the 2024–2025 season, Mr. Pittsinger makes role and stage debuts, including the title role in Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria with ARTEK, Grisóstomo in Telemann’s Don Quichotte and Fabius in Kaiser’s Octavia with the Boston Early Music Festival, Handel’s Messiah with the Charlotte Symphony, and Lurcanio in Handel’s Ariodante for Boston Baroque. This season also marks his European opera debut at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in Rameau’s Samson.

Bastien Rimondi began his musical journey with piano studies at the Narbonne Conservatory and vocal training in the Maîtrise program. At 15, he refined his vocal skills with Michel Wolkowitsky at the Abbaye de Sylvanès’s Atelier Lyrique. He later studied at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Toulouse with Jacques Schwarz, before joining the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris in 2017, studying with Frédéric Gindraux. He earned his master’s degree with high honors in 2021 and was part of the Tchaikovsky class of the Académie Musicale Philippe Jaroussky for the 2021–2022 season.

Mr. Rimondi’s repertoire spans from Baroque to contemporary, with notable roles such as Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Monsieur de Crotignac in Le peintre parisien. Recent performances include Charles de Noailles in Raphaël Lucas’s Ressusciter la rose and the Evangelist in J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion with Les Arts Florissants. This season, he performs recitals at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville and appears at the Palais Garnier in Charpentier’s Médée. Since 2015, he has collaborated with pianist Timothée Hudrisier as the duo Florestan, winning several awards, including the first prize at the Toulouse International Singing Competition.

Franco-Polish baritone Matthieu Walendzik—a graduate of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris and the Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris—has a repertoire that ranges from medieval music to contemporary works. Winner of the 10th Le Jardin des Voix, he performed the role of Ormonte in Handel’s Partenope under the direction of William Christie and Paul Agnew. He is also an artist-in-residence at the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth, where he trains with José van Dam and Sophie Koch. In 2022, he won second prize at the 11th International Baroque Singing Competition in Froville and in 2023, he received the Eurydice Prize at the Maîtres du Chant competition.

Mr. Walendzik has performed on prestigious stages such as the Philharmonie de Paris, Palau de les Arts in Valencia, Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and Opéra Royal de Versailles. His operatic roles include Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro, Dancaïre in Carmen, Marcello in La bohème, Falke in Die Fledermaus, and Russell in Lady in the Dark. As a concert soloist, he has performed Haydn’s The Creation, J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John passions, Handel’s Messiah, and Machaut’s Messe de Notre-Dame with such conductors as Stephan MacLeod, William Christie, and Sigiswald Kuijken.

An ensemble of singers and instrumentalists specialized in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments, Les Arts Florissants is renowned the world over. Founded in 1979 by William Christie, the ensemble—named for a short opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier—has played a pioneering role in the revival of a Baroque repertoire that had long been neglected (including the rediscovery of countless treasures in the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France). Today that repertoire is widely performed and admired—not only French music from the reign of Louis XIV, but also more generally European music of the 17th and 18th centuries. Since 2007, the ensemble is also conducted by the British tenor Paul Agnew, who was appointed musical co-director in 2019.

Each season, Les Arts Florissants gives approximately 100 concerts and opera performances in France—at the Philharmonie de Paris, Opéra-Comique, Opéra National de Paris, and Château de Versailles, as well as at numerous festivals—and are an active ambassador for French culture abroad, being regularly invited to New York, London, Edinburgh, Brussels, Vienna, Salzburg, Madrid, Barcelona, Moscow, and elsewhere.

Since the 1987 production of Lully’s Atys at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, which was triumphantly revived in May 2011, it has been on the opera stage that Les Arts Florissants have enjoyed their greatest successes. But Les Arts Florissants enjoy an equally high profile in the concert hall, as illustrated by many acclaimed concerts or semi-staged performances of operas and oratorios by Rameau, Charpentier, Campra, Mozart, Montéclair, Rossi, and Handel; secular and sacred chamber-music programs (including petit motets by Lully and Charpentier, madrigals by Monteverdi and Gesualdo, airs de cour by Lambert, and hymns by Purcell); and large-scale works, particularly the grands motets by Rameau, Mondonville, Campra, and Charpentier, as well as sacred works by Handel and J. S. Bach.

The ensemble has produced an impressive discography of nearly 100 recordings, and its own collection in collaboration with harmonia mundi directed by William Christie and Paul Agnew.

Les Arts Florissants have been artists in residence at the Philharmonie de Paris since 2015.