ÍøÆغÚÁÏ

Soprano Ann Monoyios is a versatile singer who has performed repertory from the early Baroque to the twentieth century. She is best known for her participation in "original" or "period" style performance with such artists as Gustav Leonhardt, Franz Brüggen, Christopher Hogwood, John Eliot Gardiner, William Christie, Philippe Herreweghe, and Reinhard Goebel. She has also toured with Canada's leading period music organization, Tafelmusik.

She has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Erato, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, CBC Records, EMI, and Sony in works including Bach's St. Matthew Passion, Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 and Johann Christian Bach's Endimione; the latter won the Echo Klassik Best Record of the Year 2000 award for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century opera.

Italian singer Sara Mingardo is considered among the more important contraltos of her generation. Her repertory is broad, encompassing works by composers from Monteverdi to Britten, though she has scored some of her greatest successes in operas and sacred music of the Baroque.

Mingardo was born in the Venetian suburb of Mestre. Though she displayed musical talent early on, she did not develop quickly: after studies in Venice at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory and in Siena at the Academia Chigiana, she made her official operatic debut in Italy only in 1987, in Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto, singing Fidalma.

Following that success she sang Cinderella in the eponymous Rossini opera, in Treviso and Rovigo, in 1988. It was in that Treviso effort that she won first prize in the annual Toti Dal Monte competition. Her other competition successes include the Giulietta Simionato Prize at the 23rd Vienna Competition. While most of Mingardo's appearances up to 1989 were at second-tier operatic venues, she began making her breakthrough at the major sites in Italy thereafter, including La Scala and San Carlo.

In 1995 she made her first recording (on Polygram Records), singing the title character in Handel's Riccardo Primo, led by Christophe Rousset. This followed her official international debut in that role, in Fontevraud, France. She reprised this same role later on at the International Festival of Baroque Music in Bonn and at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

After that 1995 French debut, she appeared regularly at numerous other major international locales: under Claudio Abbado, she sang Emilia in Verdi's Otello at the 1996 Salzburg Festival. Her U.S. debut was at the 2000 Santa Fe Opera Festival production of Rossini's Ermione, where she sang Anromaca.

Mingardo has developed a strong international following over the years and has thus been in demand on recordings. Two solo albums appeared in 2003 and 2004, respectively, on the Opus III label. The first, titled Sara Mingardo, featured works by Pergolesi, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, and Handel, and the second, works by Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Handel, and others. Other recordings include Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, Vivaldi's Stabat Mater and Armida, Pergolesi's Stabat Mater, and Verdi's Falstaff. Her 2002 recording of Berlioz's Les Troyens won a Gramophone Award and Grammy Awards for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album.

Countertenor Derek Lee Ragin is somewhat better known for his portrayals on the operatic stage than for the many concerts he has appeared in. His repertory is amazingly broad, encompassing works by Baroque composers -- Handel, in particular -- as well as twentieth century ones, like Benjamin Britten and György Ligeti.

Ragin was born in West Point, NY, on June 17, 1958. As a child growing up in Newark, NJ, he was strongly attracted to music, first studying piano. At 11 he began vocal instruction at the Newark Boys Chorus School, but when he enrolled at Oberlin College Conservatory of Music he chose to study piano, though his major did include music education in general.

Still, his goal was to become an accompanist, even as late as his senior year (1980). Vocally, he had talent, impressing friends with his playful imitations of famous operatic sopranos. At their behest, he auditioned for the countertenor role of Oberon in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He went on to perform it at the Oberlin Opera Theater production that year with great success.

His career as a singer flourished quickly, with an official operatic debut in 1983 at the Innsbruck Festwoche der Alten Musik in Cesti's Il Tito. After vocal study in Amsterdam he won first prize in the ARD International Music Competition (1986). Two years later he debuted at the Met singing Nirenus in Handel's Giulio Cesare.

After further impressive debuts (1990 Salzburg Festival in Gluck's Orfeo), Ragin's recordings began to achieve acclaim. His CD of Handel's Giulio Cesare on the Harmonia Mundi label won a Gramophone award in 1992, and his Telarc recording of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, Missa Brevis, and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast won a Grammy award in 1995.

For the 1994 movie Farinelli, about eighteenth century castrati Carlo Broschi who used the stage name of Farinelli, Ragin sang the vocal parts, and the film went on to receive a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1995.

Ragin appeared at the 1998 Tanglewood Festival with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a successful reprising of Bernstein's Chichester Psalms. Ragin has maintained a busy schedule of operatic and concert appearances in the new century and remains active in the recording studio, as well. In 2005 Naxos issued a CD featuring Ragin in works by Benjamin Britten.

The German bass-baritone Stephan Loges (LOW-gus) came on the scene with major prize wins in the late 1990s and has gone on to a significant concert and recording career in Germany, Britain (where he was partly trained), and the U.S. Loges specializes in core, German Romantic song repertory, but has also performed opera and major choral works. He is one of a relatively small number of German singers who have mastered singing in English.

Loges was born in Dresden, then in East Germany, in 1972. His musical training began in a boys' choir, the Dresdner Kreuzchor, but he did not actually take voice lessons until he was 19. He studied at the Hochschule der Künste (now the Universität der Künste, University of the Arts) in newly reunited Berlin, enrolling in 1992, and went on to London and the Guildhall School of Music three years later, studying with Rudolf Piernay and graduating in 1999. His career began while he was a student there, with appearances in Britten's Albert Herring and Fauré's Pénélope, among other productions. He also won prizes in both Britain and the U.S., including the Walker Fund Debut prize, which brought with it a concert booking at New York's 92nd Street Y. In Britain he won the 1999 Wigmore Hall Song Competition and performed Schumann's Liederkreis at that venue. He has specialized in the songs of Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, and Mendelssohn, but his repertory extends forward into the 20th century with songs by Duparc, Britten, and Poulenc. Loges has sung major choral works, including cantatas by Bach as part of conductor John Eliot Gardiner's Bach 2000 series and the Bach St. Matthew Passion at the BBC Proms in 2002, under conductor Trevor Pinnock. He has appeared in operas both in Britain and on the European continent, including roles as Golaud in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande with the English Touring Opera. Loges has issued several recordings, including a recital of songs by Schumann, Brahms, and Robert Franz on the Athene label in 2005, and as soloist in the contemporary oratorio Fields of the Fallen, by Ronald Corp, in 2016. He was signed to Signum Classics and released the recital Nature's Solace, featuring songs by Schumann, Brahms, and Yrjö Kilpinen in 2018. ~ James Manheim

Britain's Monteverdi Choir had roots in the early development of the historical-performance movement in Britain but has broadened its repertory and become recognized as one of the world's premier choral groups. The choir has continued to emphasize Baroque music, however, mounting and recording an epochal Bach Cantata Pilgrimage that has made up a large proportion of its catalog after the year 2000. Composers whose music has been recorded by the Monteverdi Choir include Mendelssohn and Bruckner. In 2023, the choir, with longtime conductor John Eliot Gardiner at the helm, released a live recording of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248; the following year, Gardiner resigned as artistic director.

The Monteverdi Choir is a group of unusually long standing within the early music movement. It was founded in 1964 by John Eliot Gardiner, who at the time was a Cambridge University undergraduate. He brought the choir together for a performance of Claudio Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 at Cambridge, hoping to infuse the score with something of its original warmth and to avoid the rather academic performances that were the norm in British early music circles at the time. The choir was immediately successful and continued to use the name Monteverdi Choir even though that composer constituted only a small part of its repertory. The Monteverdi Choir made its London debut under Gardiner in 1966 at Wigmore Hall, and it remained integral to Gardiner's work as he founded new instrumental ensembles: the English Baroque Soloists and later the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, which applied historical-performance principles to music after the Baroque period. In 1986, the choir made an early digital recording of Bach's Mass in B minor, BWV 232, for the Archiv Produktion label, with which it was associated for the first part of its career.

The choir soon became known beyond Britain and began to tour with Gardiner, reprising the Monteverdi Vespers in 1989 at St. Mark's in Venice, replicating the original performance environment of the work. The choir traveled to New York in 1996 for the inaugural Lincoln Center Festival, where it performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, and Missa Solemnis, Op. 123, with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. The choir explored 19th century music with that group, notably the mostly neglected choral music of Schumann. In the '90s, the Monteverdi Choir recorded both of Haydn's major oratorios. However, its main focus was Bach, who makes up a substantial proportion of the group's dozens of recordings on the Philips label and later on Gardiner's own label SDG, referring to the small "Soli Deo Gloria" ("Only to God's Glory") image Bach affixed to many of his compositions. In 2000, Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir undertook a Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, a monumental undertaking in which almost all of Bach's cantatas were performed over the course of the year in some churches associated with Bach's career. Most of the cantatas were recorded and were released during the 2000s and 2010s in sumptuously illustrated editions featuring Gardiner's reflections on the meanings of the individual works.

The Monteverdi Choir has also performed and recorded the music of many other composers, including Schütz, Handel, Mozart, and Schubert, and a 50th anniversary concert at Cambridge in 2014 repeated the choir's original Monteverdi program there. The choir began as an unusually progressive ensemble, but by that time, its sound was somewhat conservative; Gardiner avoided the very small choral groupings that characterize many modern Baroque performances. The Monteverdi Choir has remained extremely popular, however, especially in Britain. Notable recordings of the 2010s included one of Bach's Mass in B minor, BWV 232 (2015), Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 52 ("Lobgesang"), with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Gardiner, and Love Is Come Again (2019), featuring music for an Easter play mounted at Gardiner's family home. That was a recording of a type the Monteverdi Choir had rarely essayed before, and it spoke to the venerable choir's continuing vitality. The choir slowed its production during the COVID-19 pandemic but returned in 2022 on the Deutsche Grammophon label with a live recording of Bach's St. John Passion, BWV 245, and the following year saw the release of a recording of Bach's Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248. Both those performances were conducted by Gardiner, who resigned as artistic director of the Monteverdi Choir in July of 2024 after reports that he was physically abusive toward a performer. The Monteverdi Choir continued to perform independently of Gardiner. ~ James Manheim

The English Baroque Soloists has established itself among the world's leading period instrument orchestras. Founder and artistic director John Eliot Gardiner regularly joins his English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir in opera and choral performances. The EBS repertoire takes in music from the Classical period as well as the Baroque. Together, the groups launched the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage in 2000, performing all of Bach's sacred cantatas throughout Europe. The EBS has toured widely and has been heard on over 100 recordings. In 2020, the EBS and Monteverdi Choir, under Gardiner, issued a recording of Handel: Semele.

Although the English Baroque Soloists was officially established as a chamber ensemble of period instruments in 1978, the group actually gave its first concert at the 1977 Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, in a performance of Handel's Acis and Galatea. Founded by John Eliot Gardiner, the EBS drew many of its original members from another group Gardiner had founded (in 1968), the Monteverdi Orchestra. Shortly after its founding, Bach and Handel were largely the focus of the EBS. However, the group became closely associated with Mozart's music, mainly because of its numerous, generally highly acclaimed recordings of his works. In 1984, Gardiner and the EBS launched a series for the Archiv Produktion label devoted to Mozart's concertos for piano and orchestra with soloist Malcolm Bilson (using a fortepiano) and the first such cycle using period instruments. Two years later, with the concerto series ongoing, it launched another Mozart project, this one to cover the mature symphonies for Philips. In the summer of 1990, the EBS debuted at the Salzburg Festival, giving three concerts, all to critical acclaim.

With the 1990 release of Piano Concerto No. 24, K. 491, and No. 27, K. 595, the piano concerto series was completed, but the EBS and Gardiner immediately set to work recording the seven mature operas of Mozart for Archiv Produktion. The first release in this cycle, Idomeneo, won Gramophone's Best Opera Award in 1991. In that same year, Gardiner, the EBS, and the Monteverdi Choir appeared in a live BBC television broadcast of Mozart's Requiem performed at the Palau de la Música Catalana. The last issue in the Gardiner/EBS Mozart operas series, Die Zauberflöte, was released in 1996, after which it turned to the music of Bach.

In the late 1990s, a new series of recordings began with the release in 2000 of Bach's Cantatas No. 6 "Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend" (BWV 6) and No. 66, "Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen" (BWV 66). Along with the Monteverdi Choir, Gardiner and the EBS performed the entire cycle of 198 Bach cantatas throughout various European churches in 2000 on its Bach Cantata Pilgrimage. The EBS was hardly focusing on only Mozart or Bach in the 1990s: its performance at Covent Garden in 1995 of Haydn's Die Schöpfung was enthusiastically received and led to a successful 1997 recording on Archiv Produktion. Also, in 1995, the EBS and the Monteverdi Choir performed the music for the film England, My England, a highly acclaimed movie directed by Tony Palmer about composer Henry Purcell. That same year, Gardiner, the EBS, and Monteverdi Choir issued a multi-disc set on the label Erato devoted to Purcell's music. 2005 saw the creation of the Soli Deo Gloria label by the combined Gardiner ensembles to issue recordings from the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage. Since then, the EBS has issued a number of recordings for the label, including Handel: Semele, with the Monteverdi Choir and conducted by Gardiner, in 2020. ~ Robert Cummings & Keith Finke

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner is a leading figure in the historical performance movement, having founded the Monteverdi Choir for performances of Baroque music and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, devoted to music of the 19th century. He is especially noted for performances and recordings of Bach's choral music, and his label, Soli Deo Gloria ("To the Glory of God Only"), takes its name from the small S.D.G. signature Bach affixed to many of his works.

Gardiner was born on April 20, 1943, in the village of Fontmell Magna in England's Dorset County. It is worth notice that for the first part of his musical education, he was largely self-taught: he sang in a village church choir and played the violin. At 15, he took up conducting, and while he was studying history, Arabic, and medieval Spanish at Cambridge, he also began conducting choirs there. He led choirs from Oxford and Cambridge on a Middle Eastern tour while still an undergraduate, and in 1964, he conducted a performance of Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, a work little known at the time. Out of this performance grew the Monteverdi Choir, his primary performing ensemble. Gardiner studied musicology and conducting with Thurston Dart and Nadia Boulanger in the mid-'60s, which was his only period of formal musical study. In 1968, he founded a Monteverdi Orchestra to go with the choir; in the '70s, the group began to use Baroque instruments and was renamed the English Baroque Soloists. With this group and the Monteverdi Choir, Gardiner has made recordings numbering in the hundreds. Mostly during the first part of his career, he also worked with conventional symphony orchestras. His U.S. debut came in 1979 with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and in the '80s and early '90s, he was music director of the CBC Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, the Opera de Lyon Orchestra, and the North German Radio Orchestra (now the NDR Elbphilharmonie). In 1990, as understanding of the historical instruments used in the music of Beethoven and subsequent composers was just developing, he founded the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, leading it on tour in 1993 with a then recently rediscovered Messe solennelle of Berlioz.

One of Gardiner's most celebrated accomplishments was his Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000, with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists. The group toured for 52 weeks, performing all of Bach's cantatas at their appropriate times in the liturgical year, often in churches with relevance in Bach's own career. The performances were recorded and issued in lavish packaging on Soli Deo Gloria, with essays by Gardiner delving into the meaning of each work. These essays led Gardiner to publish a book, Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (2013). Gardiner has also recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Philips, and other labels. His Schumann symphony recordings with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique are credited with introducing a trend toward smaller forces in those works. Another major tour came in Spain in 2004, as Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir retraced the medieval Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route and sang medieval Spanish repertory. Gardiner has also appeared as a guest conductor with major symphony orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, and the Cleveland Orchestra. His recording career has not slackened in the least in his senior citizen years, as he has often released a half-dozen recordings per year or more. In 2019, he and the Monteverdi Choir released Love is come again, featuring music from the Springhead Easter Play, a mime event staged annually at Gardiner's family home and originally directed by his mother. He was not slowed much in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic, for he already had material in the hopper, including a modern-instrument recording of a pair of Schumann symphonies with the London Symphony Orchestra. He returned in 2022 with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in a new recording for the Deutsche Grammophon label of Bach's St. John Passion, BWV 245. Gardiner's many awards include designation as Commander of the British Empire in 1990 and as Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in France in 2011. ~ James Manheim