Les Arts Florissants

The performances William Christie and his vocal academy “Le Jardin des Voix” have brought to Lucerne Festival are among the finest in musical theater. In 2023, for example, he presented Purcell’s The Fairy Queen in a staging by a choreographer from the breakdance scene that was so brilliant it swept the audience off its feet. “Modern choreography to Baroque music fascinates me,” explains Christie, who just celebrated his 80th birthday at the end of 2024. And that is why he is once again working on his latest project with an unorthodox theater director: Martin Chaix, who was a solo dancer with Martin Schläpfer in Düsseldorf for many years but now works as a choreographer at such theaters as the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg, Leipzig Opera, and Vienna Staatsoper. The two will devote themselves to two one-act operas by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. In La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers, they travel to the underworld, while the idyll Les Arts florissants presents the work that inspired Christie’s name for the fantastic Baroque ensemble he founded in 1979. And, of course, great young voices will be celebrated yet again. Because Christie is not only a “gardener” but, above all, a discoverer.