The Flourishing Arts with Les Arts Florissants in "Les Arts Florissants"

Les Arts Florissants performed Charpentier's Les Arts Florissants at Caramoor Friday evening. Photo: Gabe Palacio
KATONAH, N.Y. -- William Christie, who turned 81 last December, founded Les Arts Florissants in 1979 in France, where he had relocated due to his opposition to the Vietnam War. The preeminent French early music ensemble took its name from a short chamber opera, composed by Marc-Antoine Charpentier in 1685 for Marie de Lorraine, Duchesse de Guise, and likely performed at her residence in Paris. Long after recording the piece in 1982, the group has returned to its namesake work as part of the ongoing celebrations for Christie's 80th birthday. Christie himself is leading a North American tour with the organization, pairing Les Arts Florissants with the same composer's La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers, which came to Caramoor Friday evening. Although the ongoing wildfire smoke influx threatened to scuttle the performance in that venue's outdoor Venetian Theater, by that afternoon the winds had shifted and the air was relatively cool and clear.

The story of Les Arts Florissants is allegorical. Music, Poetry, Painting, and Architecture greet warriors returning from conflict, hoping that the arts may hold greater sway over Louis XIV, now that war is at an end. War and Discord enter, leading the Chorus of the Furies in frightful displays until Peace appears, dispersing the forces of chaos. The ultimate meaning of the work, and how it may have been referencing the political situation in France in 1685, remains obscure, but its message remains ever timely. The coincidence of this performance, although likely planned long ago, with the renewed hostilities by the United States against Iran underscored Charpentier's message: the arts flourish only when war is kept at bay.

For this tour, Christie assembled a cast drawn from the flower of Le Jardin des Voix, the French Baroque training program for young singers he established in 2002. French soprano Camille Chopin presided as La Musique, with a limpid top range and impeccable phrasing, matched by American soprano Sarah Fleiss's spirited La Poésie. Tenor Bastien Rimondi and Canadian-American contralto Sydney Frodsham made a more comical pair as La Peinture and L'Architecture, respectively, but with musical delicacy. Bass-baritone Olivier Bergeron gave an over-the-top rendition of La Discorde, echoed by the ensemble as shrieking Furies, with plenty of nasal cackling to make the point. Cast and audience alike sank into serene contemplation when Croatian soprano Josipa Balić appeared as La Paix, bringing an end to discord: even a moth, seemingly charmed, alit on the end of her finger at one point.

A quartet of dancers graced the production with their movements, joined in some dances by the vocal cast, and in the final unaccompanied choral section, they sang along with their singer counterparts. The choreography by Martin Chaix was more Mark Morris than Baroque France in style, but the dancers' movements matched the elegant music with visual shapes in ways that diverted the eyes. The costumes, as such, were formalwear and simple gowns in soft pastel colors, again giving the impression of a scene that was more of our age than the past. (Two F-holes on the back of La Musique's white jacket were a nice touch.) The sense of benevolence created by the performance hung in the air, echoing the poignant lines of the final strophe: "Ô paix si longtemps désirée, / Que tes fruits à goûter sont doux, / Tu ramènes les temps de Saturne et de Rhée, / Demeure toujours avec nous." If only peace could bring back the Golden Age and dwell with us forever.

Christie presided in a self-effacing way, adding continuo touches on both harpsichord and chamber organ. Two Baroque violins took the twin parts for treble viols, part of the specific musical establishment kept by the Duchesse de Guise. (Christie recorded the work with treble viols, but they were not missed here.) Two flutists also doubled on flageolets to add a folksy character to some of the dances. Christie's delicate approach and the beautiful French declamation of the singers are what was missing from the ensemble's most recent visit to the Library of Congress in November.

Charpentier's La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers is a showcase for the high tenor who sings Orpheus. American tenor Richard Pittsinger distinguished himself with a shining high range, capable of extraordinary softness, and refined phrasing. In Act II, he gave a different vocal sheen to each of the three pleas Orpheus made to the powers of the Underworld, concluding almost in a whisper. While the opening wedding scene of Act I featured spirited singing and dancing (including the affecting return of Camille Chopin as Euridice), the piece became exquisite with the entrance into Hell in Act II. Two bass viols, played by Myriam Rignol and Mathilde Vialle, set the somber tone of the infernal scene, bathed in red light. The striking trio sung by Ixion, Tantalus, and Tityus (all infamous denizens of the Underworld) featured the perfectly matched voices of tenors Bastien Rimondi and Attila Varga-Tóth with baritone Olivier Bergeron. Their complex, interwoven lines meshed beautifully with the bass viols and other low instruments. The dark episode continued with bass Kevin Arboleda-Oquendo's sunglasses-sporting Pluton and Sarah Fleiss's alluring Proserpine.

The return of the two flutes and higher registers sounded like a ray of light as Orpheus led Euridice out of Hell. Charpentier's opera ends with that moment, probably because a third act has been lost. The choice to end the performance there added to the sense of hope. Beauty can return to the world, and it does all the time, as long as peace prevails.

The Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra performs Handel's Tolomeo, starring Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Lauren Snouffer, and Nicole Heaston 4 p.m. July 26 at Caramoor. caramoor.org

Briefly Noted: Great Venetian Mass (CD of the Month)

Vivaldi, The Great Venetian Mass, Sophie Karthäuser, Lucile Richardot, Les Arts Florissants, Paul Agnew (released on June 24, 2022) Harmonia Mundi HAF8905358 | 68'09"

One does not really need an excuse to make another recording of Vivaldi's well-known Gloria (RV 589), but it helps to have something that could set a new version apart. The distinguished French early music ensemble Les Arts Florissants hit on an ingenious solution, setting the Gloria as the centerpiece of a hypothetical reconstruction of a Great Venetian Mass by Vivaldi. The Redhead Priest, although he was required to produce several settings of the Latin Ordinary during his career at the Ospedale della Pietà, left no complete Mass that has survived. Paul Agnew, a long-time tenor with the ensemble and now serving as its musical codirector with founder William Christie, conducts a convincing interpretation that can only make the listener lament what such complete masses have been lost.

The Kyrie (RV 587) suits as a first movement, especially the second statement of "Kyrie eleison," with its playful rising chromatic scale, passed around the choir and orchestra, zipping along at a fleet tempo. A particularly nice touch comes in the motet placed between the Kyrie and Gloria, Ostro picta, armata spina (RV 642), surviving only in a manuscript in Turin. This piece, subtitled "Introduzione al Gloria," is something like a trope to preface the Gloria, because of its text likely sung for the Visitation of the Virgin on July 2, the convent-orphanage's patronal feast. Soprano Sophie Karthäuser gives a plangent edge to this solo piece, including the striking text painting of sudden silences in the main theme, "Linguis favete / Omnes silete" (Let tongues be still / Let all be silent), as the singer imposes silence so that only the words of the angelic hymn that follows can be heard.

Agnew helps his musicians shape a worthy interpretation of the famous Gloria, one of only two by Vivaldi that survive. The opening movement, adorned by two rustic natural trumpets, moves at a bubbly speed and with expressive, text-sensitive shaping of the choir's homophonic phrases. Karthäuser and steely mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot share the solo movements to optimal effect, and the aching suspensions of the "Et in terra pax" section are drawn out to languorous effect. The concluding fugue ("Cum sancto spiritu"), borrowed from another Gloria by one Giovanni Maria Ruggieri, a contemporary of Vivaldi's in Venice, is in the context of this mass reconstruction just another piece of the patchwork. Of Vivaldi's two surviving settings of the Credo, the group selected RV 591, the only one still confidently attributed to the composer. Its "Crucifixus" especially is quite lovely, a web of plaintive vocal lines over a detached walking bass.

No musical setting of the other movements of the Mass by Vivaldi survives, requiring this reconstruction to conclude with other pieces by Vivaldi retrofitted to the text of the Sanctus and Agnus dei (editions prepared by Pascal Duc). This makes perfect sense, as Vivaldi was known to cannibalize his own work in this way, as did most Baroque composers. The flowing strings of the Benedictus are particularly effective, adapted from a movement of the composer's Dixit dominus. In an apt echo of the return of the start of a cyclic mass setting at its conclusion, the final section of the Agnus dei is based on the solemn opening of the Kyrie (sadly not that zippy chromatic section of the second Kyrie). The sound, captured in 2020 in the resonant acoustic of the Église Notre-Dame-du-Liban in Paris, has a pleasing ring.