William Christie

The harpsichordist, conductor, and musicologist William Christie was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1944 and studied music at Harvard and Yale Universities. He settled in France in 1971 and began giving concerts throughout Europe. The turning point in his career came in 1979, when he founded the ensemble Les Arts Florissants. With them Christie has focused primarily on French Baroque repertoire from Charpentier to Rameau. Ever since they performed Lully’s Atys at the Opéra Comique in Paris, staged productions have also been central to their activity, whether in Paris or at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, where Christie has presented operas by composers from Monteverdi to Mozart. He has performed works by Handel and Rameau at the Glyndebourne Festival; Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, Rameau’s Les Indes galantes, Charpentier’s Médée, and, most recently, Handel’s Semele at Zurich Opera; Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Metropolitan Opera in New York; and Monteverdi’s Poppea at the Salzburg Festival. In the 2022-23 season, he conducted Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Barcelona and at the Opéra Royal de Versailles. William Christie has also worked with the Berlin Philharmonic on several occasions. Educational work is of great importance to him. In 2002 he founded Le Jardin des Voix in Caen, an academy for young singers. He has been holding master classes twice a year at New York’s Juilliard School of Music since 2007 and, in collaboration with Les Arts Florissants, he began offering the Arts Flo Masterclasses series at his estate in the Vendée in 2021. He has also been presenting the festival Dans les Jardins de William Christie there since 2012. More than 100 CDs, many of which have garnered awards, document his work. William Christie took French citizenship in 1995; he is a Commander of the Legion of Honor as well as a member of the Order of Arts and Letters and has been appointed a Grand Officier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite.

Lucerne Festival (IMF) debut on 27 August 1996 with Les Arts Florissants in works by Sigismondo d’India and Claudio Monteverdi.

July 2023