Carnegie Hall

Théotime Langlois de Swarte is rapidly emerging as a much sought-after violin soloist, chamber musician, recitalist, and conductor. Recognition has come in the form of major awards, including the 2022 Diapason d’Or de l’Année for his recording of Vivaldi, Locatelli, and Leclair concertos, and the 2022 Ambassador of the Year Award from the REMA European Early Music Network, along with additional recording awards and a cover story in The Strad.

In solo appearances on both Baroque and modern violin, Mr. de Swarte regularly offers concertos by all Baroque masters, along with those of Haydn and Mozart. He has appeared with Les Arts Florissants, Holland Baroque, Les Ombres, Le Consort, and Orchestre National de Lorraine. His engagements have brought him to prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Philharmonie de Paris, Vienna’s Musikverein, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, Berlin’s Philharmonie, Los Angeles’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, and Shanghai National Arts Center.

Mr. de Swarte studied at the Paris Conservatory under Michaël Hentz, and became a regular member of Les Arts Florissants at William Christie’s invitation in 2014 while still a student. He has also performed in recital with Mr. Christie, including on a 2021 recording of sonatas by Leclair and Senaillé.

As co-founder with harpsichordist Justin Taylor of the Baroque ensemble Le Consort, Mr. de Swarte can be heard on numerous recordings, including Specchio Veneziano, Opus 1, and Royal Handel—all on Alpha Classics. Le Consort has performed widely throughout Europe, and its debut North American tour in the 2023–2024 season included stops in Boston, Berkeley, Chicago, Kansas City, Louisville, New Orleans, Montreal, Ottawa, St. Paul, Vancouver, and Washington, DC.

In addition to Mr. Christie, Mr. de Swarte’s frequent recital collaborators include harpsichordist Justin Taylor and lute player Thomas Dunford, with whom he recorded a much-praised album The Mad Lover. He also recorded A Concert at the Time of Proust playing the newly restored Davidov Stradivarius of the Philharmonie de Paris Museum. His most recent recording, Antonio Vivaldi Concerti per una Vita (harmonia mundi), has garnered wide acclaim, and 2025 sees the release of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the work’s publication.

Théotime Langlois de Swarte plays a violin of Carlo Bergonzi (1733) on generous loan from an anonymous patron.

An ensemble of singers and instrumentalists specialized in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments, Les Arts Florissants are renowned the world over. Founded in 1979 by the Franco-American harpsichordist and conductor 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, Paris National Opera, and Château de Versailles, as well as at numerous festivals—and is 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 Atysat 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 their many acclaimed concerts or semi-staged performances of operas and oratorios by Rameau, Charpentier, Campra, Mozart, Montéclair, Rossi, and Handel, their secular and sacred chamber-music programs (including petits motetsby Lully and Charpentier, madrigals by Monteverdi and Gesualdo, airs de cour by Lambert, hymns by Purcell), and their large-scale works, particularly the grands motetsby 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 (CDs and DVDs) and its own collection in collaboration with harmonia mundi directed by William Christie and Paul Agnew.

Les Arts Florissants has been ensemble in residence at the Philharmonie de Paris and is recognized as a Heritage Site for Culture.