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William Christie
Harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist and teacher, William Christie is the driving force behind one of the most remarkable musical adventures of the past forty years. Born in Buffalo and based in France, his career took a decisive turn in 1979 when he founded Les Arts Florissants. At the head of this instrumental and vocal ensemble, he played a pioneering role in the rediscovery of Baroque music, introducing a wide audience to the largely neglected or forgotten French repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries.
By radically transforming the interpretation of this repertoire, he established a highly distinctive artistic style, both as a musician and as a man of the theatre, through major concert and opera productions. His discography includes more than a hundred recordings, notably in the “Les Arts Florissants” collection on the Harmonia Mundi label, which recently released an album devoted to Haydn’s Paris Symphonies.
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William Christie has also nurtured several generations of singers and instrumentalists. Keen to pass on his experience to young artists, he founded Le Jardin des Voix in 2002, the academy for young singers of Les Arts Florissants, and teaches as part of a residency at the Juilliard School in New York.
Passionate about garden design, he founded the Dans les Jardins de William Christie Festival in 2012, held every summer at his estate in Thiré, in the Vendée region. The gardens he designed there are listed on the Supplementary Inventory of Historic Monuments and have been awarded the “Jardin remarquable” (Remarkable Garden) label. In 2018, he donated his entire estate to the William Christie – Les Arts Florissants Foundation, headquartered in Thiré. During the 2023/2024 season, he conducted three new opera productions: Handel’s Ariodante at the Philharmonie de Paris, the Royal Opera of the Palace of Versailles and the Grand Théâtre de Genève; Purcell’s The Fairy Queen on an international tour; and Charpentier’s Médée at the Opéra national de Paris.
