In the tranquil Vendée region of western France, a gardener meticulously trimmed a tall topiary cone. Nearby, a man scattered food for swans gliding gracefully across a long, serene lake, while technicians fine-tuned sound equipment on a temporary stage spanning the water.
This scene unfolds at the elaborate gardens of William Christie, the renowned harpsichordist and conductor. Taking a brief respite from rehearsals, Christie walked among his meticulously maintained grounds, carefully plucking a singed brown leaf from a fruit tree—a casualty of a recent heatwave. “Alas,” he lamented, reflecting on the increasingly frequent extreme weather, “We’ve got a lot of clearing up to do before the festival.”
It was late August in Thiré, the small town where Christie has dedicated decades to restoring an abandoned 17th-century manor house and cultivating a magnificent Baroque garden. Now, he was preparing to host his annual weeklong music festival, Dans les Jardins de William Christie. This year’s festival marked the culmination of a season-long celebration of his 80th birthday and the remarkable musical empire he has painstakingly built.
Born in Buffalo, New York, Christie is revered in France for his pivotal role in reviving French Baroque music, breathing new life into the works of composers like Lully, Charpentier, Couperin, and Rameau. His innovative and passionate performances have made early music exciting and fashionable, regularly selling out prestigious venues from the opera house at Versailles to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Both in his music and his gardens, Christie embodies the spirit of a perfectionist with a deep appreciation for beauty. His ensemble’s chosen repertoire, much like his meticulously recreated Grand Siècle home and its dazzling gardens, thrives once more, resurrected from a state of neglect that defined them when he first began his journey.
When Christie arrived in France in 1970, he recalled, the early music repertoire in concert halls was “almost nonexistent.” And when he discovered the Thiré property in 1985, it was nothing more than an abandoned house surrounded by fields. Yet, he immediately recognized its immense potential.
“It was pretty much in my head, the whole thing,” he said, referring to the garden. But his words could just as easily have described the vision for his ensemble and its ambitious projects.
The Eloquence of Music
A few hours later, Christie was in the village community hall, leading a rehearsal of Charpentier’s “La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers” with this year’s promising young singers from Le Jardin des Voix, an academy he founded in 2002, alongside a small group of musicians.
Lean and sharp-witted, dressed in lemon-colored pants and a crisp shirt, Christie raised a hand to halt the music. “Do you have the text in front of you?” he inquired of the cellist, who nodded nervously. “It’s a very important question,” Christie emphasized. “You can’t play or sing French music if you don’t understand how the musicality of language, declamation, and syntax are essentially the way music becomes eloquent.”
Throughout the rehearsal, he frequently paused the singers, meticulously honing their articulation and emphasis. “Please, give me words!” he would urge. He corrected a scream, quipping, “No, no, that’s the tryout for ‘Turandot’,” and vividly demonstrated a dying breath with a drawn-out “Je meu-eu-eurs…” Often, he made the singers repeat a single phrase until it perfectly captured his vision.
A video showed a rehearsal for a performance in the Dans les Jardins de William Christie festival.
“He can be demanding because he demands as much from himself,” explained Myriam Rignol, a viola da gamba player who has performed with the ensemble for 12 years. “You aren’t forced to do exactly what he wants; you just need to convince him with your own approach. Technique is almost secondary; it’s the passion that truly matters.”
Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, who first collaborated with Les Arts Florissants on Handel’s “Hercules” in 2004, admitted she arrived at rehearsals “duly terrified,” expecting “to be told all the things that were not correct.”
Instead, she recalled, Christie welcomed the cast with a speech that “began with the revelation that this was a true work of human drama and he wanted everything we had to offer vocally from ‘the whitest white sound, to the most full-throttle screams.’ “
“I felt unleashed,” DiDonato recounted, having surprised Christie by performing at an 80th birthday concert at Carnegie Hall earlier this year.
Soprano Sonya Yoncheva, a highly sought-after artist in leading opera houses worldwide, credits the true beginning of her career to her participation in his Jardin des Voix program in 2007. “I think Bill’s innovation is that he approached the music with all of his knowledge but also an animal instinct in terms of colors,” she noted. “With his knowledge, his charm, it becomes so emotional, and he can communicate that to an audience.”
Leaving for Paris During the Vietnam War
Surprisingly, Christie hadn’t initially planned a career in music. He began piano lessons at a young age with his mother, an accomplished musician who directed the church choir and was a fervent supporter of the Buffalo Philharmonic.
“Through the choir, I got to know one of the most important aspects of Western music: sacred music,” Christie explained during an interview in his barrel-vaulted library, surrounded by piles of books, scores, and classical busts.
He recalled an “incredible fascination for early music even then,” confessing to having once damaged a piano in his parents’ home by inserting thumbtacks into its hammers to emulate a harpsichord sound after hearing Handel’s “Messiah.”
He pursued art history at Harvard, where he joined musical societies, performed in various ensembles, and once immersed himself in music for a week, “listening nonstop to Janet Baker in Rameau’s “Hippolyte et Aricie,” after a roommate shared a recording with him.
It wasn’t until his third year that he embraced his destiny. “Someone on the music faculty said to me: ‘Why are you stalling?’ ” Christie recounted. ” ‘Look at yourself in the mirror and say the only thing I can do well and like to do is make music.’ “
As a graduate student at Yale, he studied under harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, then taught at Dartmouth for a year. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, and after four students protesting the war were tragically shot and killed at Kent State University in 1970, he made a life-altering decision. “I said to myself, that’s it, my time is up.”
Already a Francophile who spoke the language and adored the music, he departed for Paris.
Reviving Long-Forgotten Music
For several years, Christie moved between Paris, Amsterdam, and London, teaching and performing with various ensembles. In 1979, driven by a determination to revitalize France’s stagnant early music scene, he formed a nimble ensemble of singers and musicians eager to explore the repertoire using period instruments. He named it Les Arts Florissants, after a 17th-century Charpentier opera.
“The Dutch and the British could play Vivaldi and Handel, but not French music,” he explained. “And the French paid lip service, but believed you could play everything with a single modern technique. It was the last music of the 16th to 18th century to be dusted off — and we did it.” The ensemble’s significant breakthrough came with a 1987 production of Lully’s “Atys” at the Opera Comique in Paris, directed by Jean-Marie Villegier. This was Paris’s first presentation of the opera in over two centuries, and the production’s vitality and freshness shattered any lingering notions that the Baroque repertoire was solely the domain of academic musicologists.
“The staging was brilliant, and we worked for endless hours on making the music eloquent and the recitative not just palatable but exciting,” Christie recalled. “We were discovering sounds on early instruments that composers would have known back then, and experimenting with techniques not typically embraced by modern instrument players.” He described it as “grand musical theater,” adding, “and it set us on a world course.”
Over the subsequent decades, Christie and Les Arts Florissants have consistently graced major opera houses and concert halls, captivating audiences with unexpected collaborations alongside avant-garde directors and choreographers. These included Robert Carsen (Handel’s “Alcina” and Rameau’s “Les Boréades”), Debra Warner (Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas”), Peter Sellars (Handel’s “Theodora”), Basil Twist (Mondonville’s “Titon et l’Aurore”), and Mourad Merzouki (Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen”), among many others.
“Bill was astonishing because of his radical openness,” said Peter Sellars. “With Handel, your preconceptions are the least interesting part; the work itself had to speak, and I could be truly exploratory with someone who was wide open to what could be next.”
A video showed Christie in his restored 17th-century manor house.
Christie’s ability to combine theatrical flair with profound musical scholarship and sophistication has been crucial to his immense impact and influence, according to Nicholas Kenyon, former director of the Proms, Britain’s most prominent classical music festival. “There are certainly other contenders in terms of people who have moved this music into the mainstream, but he has done it in a distinctive, theatrical, and audience-friendly way,” Kenyon observed.
Walking through his gardens, Christie spoke animatedly about collaborating with directors and choreographers. “This music is wonderful, rhythmically for dance,” he remarked. “I think Rameau is as interesting as Stravinsky for a choreographer. I have done some period revivals, but it’s so much less free, and so much less fun.”
Ensuring the Future of the Past
Christie has been wholeheartedly embraced by his adopted country. He became a French citizen, holds the Légion d’honneur among numerous other accolades, and was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2008. Since 2015, Les Arts Florissants has proudly served as a resident orchestra at the Philharmonie de Paris.
“There have been ups and downs, a few hard knocks,” Christie admitted about his life in France, particularly noting that he wasn’t initially welcomed with open arms when he first settled in Thiré, a small community wary of outsiders.
He has meticulously planned for the future. In 2019, Christie invited Paul Agnew, a singer and conductor extensively involved with Les Arts Florissants, to join him as co-director. Furthermore, the ensemble is now structured as a foundation, which not only owns the house and gardens but has also acquired and restored other properties in Thiré, where his festival now attracts around 10,000 visitors annually.
“Despite France’s occasional posturing, it has been very kind to me,” Christie reflected. “I have been able to do things I could perhaps only have done here.”
His next ambitious endeavor is to construct a theater with dedicated rehearsal space in Thiré. Currently, the only large-scale performance venue is the outdoor stage over the lake, known as the Mirroir d’eau. The foundation has already secured land and raised initial funds for a feasibility study, acknowledging the significant fundraising efforts required.
Christie often poses rhetorical questions, such as: “Do I have moments of asking what I am doing? Yes.”
Yet, he possesses an undeniable talent for turning improbable dreams into reality. “That’s his talent,” affirmed Thomas Dunford, a lutenist who performs with Les Arts Florissants. “He sees what he wants and makes it happen.”