Les Arts Florissants

February 1, 2004

BY WYNNE DELACOMA Classical Music Critic

Twenty-five years ago, the idea that Baroque opera, especially French Baroque opera, would one day be a hot ticket was about as likely as a rekindled taste for the pole lamps and amoeba-shaped coffee tables of '50s-era sunken suburban living rooms.

Back then, outside a handful of devotees, Handel operas were generally considered impossible to stage, and opera companies presented them only when a megastar like Marilyn Horne insisted. In the eyes of the general classical music public, Monteverdi was known, just barely, for his madrigals, and stage music by such 17th and early 18th century masters as Lully, Rameau and Charpentier was rarely heard outside music history classes. No one could expect an audience to sit through some masque, opera-ballet, intermezzo or whatever they called it at the court of Louis XIV or James I about the conflict between Harmony and Discord or other allegorical figures? Mon dieu! Quel bore.

Well, amoeba-shaped coffee tables are back in style, thanks to the fad for mid-century modern architecture. And Chicago music lovers count themselves lucky for a chance Sunday to hear the acclaimed French ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, in two semi-staged Charpentier operas: a light-hearted celebration of the arts, "Les Arts florissants" and a version of the Orpheus and Euridice myth, "La Descente d'Orphee aux Enfers" ("The Descent of Orpheus into the Underworld").

The concert kicks off a four-city U.S. tour that includes stops in Washington, D.C., New York, and Atlanta. Celebrating its 25th anniversary this season, Les Arts Florissants also is observing the 300th anniversary of Charpentier's death (not to mention Les Arts Florissants founder and artistic director William Christie's 60th birthday).

Many forces combined to attune contemporary ears to Baroque opera. The period instrument movement, which first gathered steam in Europe in the 1950s, has filtered into the far ends of the classical music world. A steady stream of scholarship has moved the most obscure Baroque operas from dank library shelves to concert-hall music stands. Lively performances with committed conductors and stage directors, talented singers and musicians, some of them quite young, have drawn large audiences interested in a modern take on 300-year-old music.

Since 1979, the number of Baroque operas offered by member companies of OperaAmerica, the field's leading professional organization, has more than doubled. Superdiva Renee Fleming sings Baroque opera and hip choreographer Mark Morris stages it.

Christie, an American born in Buffalo, N.Y., who took up permanent residence in France in 1971 and founded Les Arts Florissants in 1979, is a major force in the revival of Baroque opera. In the area of French Baroque opera, he is the prime mover.

"I got to know the music of Charpentier in the States, through modern editions of his works," said Christie in a phone interview last week from the ensemble's home base in Caen, France. The company was in the midst of an eight-city European tour with the Charpentier operas that opened Jan. 13 and included performances in Paris, London, Vienna and Madrid. "The most important were done by my friend Wiley Hitchcock [a leading historian of Baroque music] way back, 40 or 50 years ago. When I came to Europe, all of [Charpentier's] autograph manuscripts were in Paris.

"It's a style of music I like very much," he said of the composer whose little "idylle en musique" composed in 1685-86 provided Les Arts Florissants with its name. "It's a very personal kind of language, very colored and very rich. More than that, the fact that he wrote for small groups of singers and instrumental players was just perfect for me because that's exactly what I had when I founded my own ensemble in 1979. The pieces he wrote seemed to fit us perfectly well."

Christie is fearsomely demanding; his expectations of his singers and players are as rigorous as his attention to minute points of scholarship in the scores themselves. But Les Arts Florissants' performances are brisk and airy, full of bounce and verve as well as psychological insight. Like the best Baroque opera, they bring us face to face with characters and situations we can immediately sympathize with and understand.

When he moved to Paris in 1971, Christie little suspected that he would become a leader of a musical revolution. He had loved French Baroque music since hearing it as a pre-teen on recordings at home, and had studied at Harvard and Yale, including harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick. Supporting himself with miscellaneous keyboard jobs, he fell in with singers and other musicians also fascinated by Baroque music, the more obscure the better.

Les Arts Florissants was an immediate success, and today the ensemble has an artistic residency at the Theatre du Caen. They record regularly, and two years ago, Christie launched a two-week training session for young singers to be held every other year in Caen. Plans for publishing scores are in the works.

"I started Les Arts Florissants in order to do things my way," said Christie with no hint of false modesty. "That's why one starts an ensemble. The idea was that we would defend the underdog, especially the French musician [Charpentier] who was unknown and unloved in the 17th and 18th century. And to put into question the way people were interpreting better-known composers like Monteverdi or Lully or Rameau.

"I've pretty much lived day to day," said Christie when asked if he could have ever envisioned a 25th anniversary when he founded Les Arts Florissants in 1979. "But it's been so successful and so wonderful since then, one does start to think about what might happen in the next 20 years."

One thing he believes will happen is Baroque opera's continuing acceptance in the greater operatic universe.

"It's world repertoire now. It's not something that's going to disappear."

LES ARTS FLORISSANTS

When: 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan
Tickets: $15-$35
Phone: (312) 294-3000

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