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France's Les Arts Florissants was a pioneering ensemble when the group was formed in 1979, unearthing Baroque works from France and beyond and performing them in historically authentic style. The group's influence has hardly diminished over its four decades of existence; it has spawned numerous operatic careers and has established a successful training program, Le Jardin des Voix.

Les Arts Florissants was founded by the harpsichordist William Christie, who had left the U.S. because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. A scholar as well as a musician, Christie largely created the group's repertory on his own; the works of French Baroque theatrical and choral composers like Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Jean-Philippe Rameau were only sparsely known to audiences when Christie began his work, but he edited new scores for performance, often delving into the collection of Paris' Bibliothèque Nationale. By 1985, Les Arts Florissants were mounting productions of French operas, like Rameau's Anacréon and Charpentier's Actéon, sumptuous French court works that required full-scale authentic performances to come alive. In 1987, the group received the first of several Grand Prix de la Critique awards for its production of Jean-Baptiste Lully's Atys, which subsequently toured Europe and New York.

Les Arts Florissants attracted the attention of major French recording companies almost immediately, signing with Harmonia Mundi and releasing a recording of works by the almost unknown composer Etienne Moulinié in 1980. That was the beginning of a partnership with Harmonia Mundi that, by the mid-2020s, had grown to encompass well over 100 albums. Les Arts Florissants has recorded choral music with its own Les Arts Florissants Choir, often focusing on the French grand motet repertory, and it has performed and recorded Italian and English operatic works. At the center of its repertory, however, is French opera, a field in which it has reigned supreme, working with France's top stage directors and choreographers. The stability of the Les Arts Florissants sound has been partly due to the long-term leadership of Christie, who turned over some duties to tenor and conductor Paul Agnew in the late 2000s but has remained active and vital in his involvement with the group.

Over time, the group's repertory has expanded forward in time somewhat to include the music of Mozart, but unlike other early music groups, Les Arts Florissants has not attempted contemporary works. In 2002, Christie founded Le Jardin des Voix ("The Garden of Voices"), which soon became one of Europe's top enterprises for the training of young talent in the historical-performance field. Les Arts Florissants did not slacken its pace in the 2010s, releasing several albums a year. In 2019, under Christie, the group released Si vous vouliez un jour: Airs sérieux et à boire, Vol. 2, on Harmonia Mundi. Les Arts Florissants remained active throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing 11 albums on Harmonia Mundi between 2021 and 2023 alone. Those included Schütz: Italian Madrigals in 2023. ~ James Manheim

One of the world's foremost tenors specializing in Baroque opera and choral music, Paul Agnew has a long vocal résumé that includes works of many nationalities and time periods. He has also turned to conducting in the second half of his career, becoming the first conductor other than founder William Christie to lead the noted French Baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants.

Agnew was born in Glasgow on April 11, 1964. He attended Magdalen College at Oxford University as a choral scholar, performing in the school's famous chapel choir in addition to his academic studies. When he graduated, London's early music scene was burgeoning, and there were plenty of opportunities for a young singer. He performed in the Consort of Musicke and also sang at various times with The Sixteen, Gothic Voices, and The Tallis Scholars. Launching a career as a soloist in the early '90s, Agnew attracted Christie's attention and was offered the chance to move to France to perform with Les Arts Florissants. He was soon the group's lead vocal soloist, performing lead roles in such operas as Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, in a production that traveled around France and as far as New York. Agnew was a tenor, but he also sang in a high register in a voice known in French as the haute-contre. He has sometimes been described as a countertenor as well as a tenor, but the haute-contre, of which Agnew was one of the few exponents when he began taking such roles in the '90s, has a different vocal quality that involves less falsetto than a true countertenor voice. Although Agnew has devoted much of his career to Les Arts Florissants, he has also sung in English and has recorded a wide variety of material, including songs of Ivor Gurney and, in 2001, Beethoven's settings of English-language folk songs. He has also performed in large choral works by Bach and others and recorded English voice and lute music with lutenist Christopher Wilson.

In 2007, Agnew began leading Les Arts Florissants as associate conductor; he began to conduct the group more and more often, and later, he was named joint music director. In 2018, conducting Les Arts Florissants, he released an album devoted to little-known French Baroque motet composers Sébastien de Brossard and Pierre Bouteiller. Christie remains the artistic director of Les Arts Florissants, but Agnew has begun to conduct the group more often. He has led music from beyond the French Baroque, initiating recorded series of the madrigals of Monteverdi and Gesualdo in the 2010s and 2020s. In 2023, the Gesualdo series concluded with recordings of the composer's Fifth and Sixth Books of Madrigals and the Tenebrae Responsories. ~ James Manheim