Handel Susanna - Barbican

Julien Mignot/Virgin Classics
Sunday 25 October 2009 7.00pm
Barbican Hall
Handel Susanna
Sophie Karthäuser Susanna
Max Emanuel Cencic Joacim
Maarten Koningsberger Chelsias
William Burden First Elder
Alan Ewing Second Elder
David DQ Lee Daniel
Emmanuelle De Negri Attendant
Ludovic Provost A Judge
Les Arts Florissants
William Christie conductor
There will be one interval of 20 minutes, after Act 1.
These concerts are part of a series of programmes
between London and Paris co-produced by the Barbican
Centre, the Salle Pleyel and the Cité de la Musique on the
occasion of the 30th anniversary of Les Arts Florissants.

introduction
Les Arts Florissants at 30
What a difference a generation makes. In the past 30 years, the world of Baroque music-making has been transformed.
Musicians had for a while been acquiring the skills of playing old instruments and rediscovering former playing styles, but it
was only during the 1970s that these made a major impact on the wider public. Of course there had been pioneers before
this: a whole generation of enthusiasts and researchers had explored old repertory, and Arnold Dolmetsch had played his
clavichord in candlelit London drawing rooms to the delight of George Bernard Shaw and Percy Grainger. But this was
essentially an esoteric activity – until a new generation of players and conductors launched themselves into the re-creation of
Baroque ensembles in the 1970s.
William Christie’s achievement with his French group Les Arts Florissants from 1979 onwards has been an outstanding part of
this revival, for it grew out of a repertory that many had thought inaccessible – the distant world of the French Baroque, with
its rich and dense texts, its complex ornamentation and rhetoric, and its unfamiliar emotional language. What Christie and
his young ensemble achieved in spectacular fashion was to show how, when performed with penetrating understanding and
vivid communication, this music could be made as available and exciting as any on offer. From Charpentier (who gave the
ensemble its name) and Lully through to Rameau, Les Arts Florissants lit up this music and brought it to life with unparalleled
success.
Christie’s ensemble has moved from the French Baroque into Handel and Purcell, Monteverdi and Landi, and beyond that to
Haydn and Mozart. It has gained a huge following for its fresh insights into Haydn’s The Creation and Monteverdi’s Vespers,
and its staged operas here at the Barbican – the fantastical, video-dominated production of Rameau’s Les Paladins and Luc
Bondy’s severely intense staging of Handel’s Hercules – have been among the highlights of our output.
So it is appropriate that this anniversary season celebrates the historic achievement of Les Arts Florissants with opera
(Purcell’s immortal Dido and Aeneas), oratorio (Handel’s rarely performed Susanna) and the French choral motets that the
group has made its own. And it is also entirely typical of its work with younger artists that for two of these anniversary
concerts, William Christie hands the baton on to directors of the next generation, Jonathan Cohen and Paul Agnew. Like the
great music of the past, Les Arts Florissants will continue to reinvent itself as it looks towards the next 30 years.
Nicholas Kenyon
Managing Director
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programme note
George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)
Susanna, HWV 66 (1748)
An oratorio in three acts
Libretto after the Apocrypha
Handel had ridden the crest of a nationalist wave with his
‘victory’ oratorios of 1746–7, The Occasional Oratorio, Judas
Maccabaeus (prompted by ‘Butcher’ Cumberland’s brutal
quelling of the Jacobite forces at Culloden), Alexander Balus
and Joshua. Having given the English something ‘to hit them
on the drum of the ear’, as he wryly put it, Handel turned
decisively from this bellicose vein in his next pair of oratorios,
Solomon and Susanna, composed in the spring and summer
of 1748 in readiness for the 1749 Lenten season. Both works
seem to share the same, anonymous, librettist, and celebrate
justice, marriage and the delights of the countryside. Yet
in other respects they could hardly be more different.
Solomon, with its hieratic double choruses and sumptuous
orchestration, glorifies kingship and an idealised golden
age. Susanna, scored for a chamber orchestra of oboes,
bassoons and strings (plus trumpets in the celebratory music
at the end of Act 3) is an intimate drama on the favourite
18th-century ‘sentimental’ theme of wronged innocence, with
occasional shades of the newly fashionable ballad opera.
After Susanna’s premiere at Covent Garden on 10 February
1749, the Countess of Shaftesbury – one of Handel’s most
faithful supporters – wrote to another passionate Handelian
James Harris: ‘I … believe it will insinuate itself so much into
my approbation as most of Handel’s performances do, as it
is in the light operatic style’, adding, ‘I think I never saw a
fuller house.’ After three performances the composer
deposited the handsome sum of £550 (roughly equivalent to
£70,000 today) in his bank account. But Handel’s wider
middle-class public did not apparently share the Countess’s
enthusiasm. Susanna was taken off after one further
performance, and only revived, in a mangled and truncated
version, during the last weeks of Handel’s life. Even in an age
4
when the composer has never had it so good, it remains one
of the least known of his oratorios.
Perhaps the ‘light operatic style’ cultivated in parts of this
Biblical detective story drawn from the Apocrypha has fazed
audiences expecting epic Handelian fare. Though set
against the background of Jewish exile in Babylon, Susanna
is in essence a drama of English village life, with, as Winton
Dean puts it in his classic study of Handel’s oratorios,
something of ‘the charm of a Chaucer tale’. But Dean surely
goes too far in calling Susanna ‘a comic opera’ and the
lascivious, ultimately evil Elders merely ‘caricatures of the
naughty old men to be found in any English village’. True,
there is a touch of humour in Handel’s treatment of the
Elders. But the oratorio’s central themes – of spotless
innocence versus senile lechery, attempted rape, perjury and
Susanna’s narrowly averted judicial murder – are anything
but comic.
The angular, edgy fugue of the overture, fruitfully recycling
motifs from John Blow’s 1684 St Cecilia Ode, immediately
establishes a serious tone. Its mood is then intensified in the
sombrely magnificent choral chaconne ‘How long, oh Lord’
on a four-bar descending ground bass – traditional
Baroque symbol of mourning (compare, say, Dido’s Lament).
While some commentators, Dean included, have found this
Aeschylean opening chorus incongruous in the light of the
marital idyll that follows, Handel surely intended it as a
harbinger of the grave issues at stake in the work. He
balances it with the equally momentous chorus, in three
sections, at the end of Act 1. While the antics of the infatuated
Elders are ridiculous, the potentially appalling consequences
of their actions unleash a minatory thunderbolt, culminating
in a tremendous double fugue that sets a falling chromatic

line against a lashing countersubject inspired by the words
‘Wrath divine outstrips the wind’.
Described in the Apocrypha as ‘a very fair woman, and one
that feared the Lord,’ Susanna – a role written for Giulia
Frasi, favoured prima donna of Handel’s later years – is one
of the composer’s most sensitive and touching creations,
whose developing portrait is the prime agent of unity in an
oratorio of wide-ranging musical styles. Her sweetness,
piety and unclouded happiness are beautifully evoked in her
first two arias – the dulcet ‘Would custom bid the melting
fair’, with its tender violin echoes and blissful lingering on
the word ‘mine’, and the tripping, galant ‘Without the
swain’s assiduous care’ – and in her blithe duet with her
husband Joacim. Yet even before the entry of the Elders,
her husband’s imminent absence prompts a strange sense
of foreboding. Her accompanied recitative and noble
B minor aria ‘Bending to the throne of glory’, movingly
suggest a strength and steadfastness that make her first
cousin to the Christian martyr Theodora, heroine of
Handel’s next oratorio.
Susanna’s characterisation deepens further in Acts 2 and 3.
In ‘Crystal streams’, the sounds and scents of a sultry
summer’s afternoon, and her longing for Joacim
(bowdlerised, like so much else in the oratorio, in the Novello
vocal score), provoke a ravishing aria of drowsy sensuality.
After her rejection of the Elders, she attains tragic stature in
‘If guiltless blood’, music of mingled stoicism and, in the rapt
major-key central section (briefly interrupted by the Second
Elder’s demand for her death), spiritual radiance. Susanna’s
kinship with Theodora is again underlined in her sublime
Act 3 air ‘Faith displays her rosy wing’, whose key, F minor,
programme note
and abrupt dynamic contrasts suggest an inner anguish at
odds with the serene faith of the words. Finally, Handel gives
her a bravura aria, ‘Guilt trembling’, celebrating the triumph
of virtue and her heroism in the face of death – and allowing
La Frasi to impress the Covent Garden public with her agile
coloratura technique.
Handel’s portrayal of the two Elders, Judges of the exiled
Jewish community ‘waxen old in wickedness’, is equally vivid.
The self-dramatising First Elder announces himself in an
over-the-top accompanied recitative, like a parody of an
opera seria scena, and then launches into a wheedlingly
sentimental minuet-ballad ‘Ye verdant hills’. His second aria,
‘When the trumpet’, is in mock-martial vein, with priapic
flourishes from the violins. He is initially more consciencestricken
than his companion-in-lechery; yet his hypocritical
grief at Susanna’s imminent death, ‘Round thy urn’, is the
most morally repulsive moment in the oratorio. The Second
Elder is all incontinent bluster, his two arias characterised by
gruff unisons, splenetic coloratura and absurd vocal leaps.
Like his closest Handelian predecessor, the cyclops
Polyphemus in Acis and Galatea, he is at once comicgrotesque
and formidable. The Elders’ contrasted
characters are brilliantly delineated in the dramatic trio that
forms the climax of Act 2, ‘Away, ye tempt me both in vain’.
As Susanna hurls defiance, the First Elder entreats in
simpering chromaticisms, while the Second threatens
violence in peremptory scales doubled by cellos and basses.
If the other characters are more generic, each has
memorable music. Of Joacim’s three arias in Act 1, ‘When
first I saw my lovely maid’ is a lilting, quintessentially English
pastoral, while ‘The parent bird’ features gently twittering
5

programme note
violins in a soulful F sharp minor. Susanna’s father Chelsias
does little but mouth moralising platitudes. But his arias are
vital: ‘Who fears the Lord’, earnestly contrapuntal, while in his
final aria, ‘Raise your voice’, taken up by the chorus, a solo
trumpet vies in jubilation with the voice.
Early in Act 2 Susanna’s (unnamed) Attendant seeks to
assuage her mistress’s longing for the absent Joacim with
the song he composed when he was wooing her: ‘Ask if yon
damask rose’ is a delectable rustic bourrée with, again, a
pronounced English flavour. (This prime example of ‘the
light operatic style’ was pilfered by Thomas Arne in his
ballad opera Love in a Village.) The Attendant’s second
song, ‘Beneath the cypress’, recalling her own lover’s
death and presaging the near-tragedy of the following
scenes, is a sorrowful D minor siciliano (a vein in which
Handel never failed) with an undertow of eroticism. The
youth Daniel, a Biblical deus ex machina, has his moment
of glory in the aria ‘Chastity, thou cherub bright’, whose
spiritual serenity and rich, often contrapuntal, string textures
make it a counterpart to Irene’s ‘sunrise’ aria ‘As with rosy
steps the morn’ in Theodora.
6
In Susanna Handel seems to have been less concerned than
in most of his oratorios to give the chorus a consistent role. In
the opening ‘How long, oh Lord’ they give grieving voice to
the community of deracinated Jews. Elsewhere – say, in the
finales to the first two acts, and the powerful choral prelude
and fugue in the courtroom scene, ‘Righteous heav’n’ –
they stand outside the action, commenting on its moral
implications like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. The finale of
Act 3, ‘Bless’d be the day’ – a paean to Susanna’s virtue – is
a jaunty bourrée, far closer in style to Handel’s opera finales
than to his other oratorios, and doubtless another reason for
Lady Shaftesbury’s verdict. Only once, at the opening of Act
3, does the chorus participate directly in the action. ‘The
cause is decided’ is a marvellously graphic depiction of the
excited crowd in the courtroom, chattering chaotically
among themselves before uniting for cries of ‘Susanna is
guilty, Susanna must bleed.’
Programme note © Richard Wigmore
Surtitles by Kenneth Chalmers

Synopsis
The action is set in Babylon during the Jewish exile.
Act 1
After a choral lament, the fair Susanna and her husband
Joacim, described in the Apocrypha as ‘a great rich man’,
sing of their marital happiness. Susanna’s father Chelsias,
who has raised his daughter ‘to fear the Lord’, voices the
hope that Susanna’s devotion and piety may inspire ‘each
wedded wife’. Joacim announces that he must make a
business trip. After a change of scene, two Elders (‘the
boasted Guardians of our Laws’) appear, both consumed
with lust for Susanna. The First Elder has more trouble with his
conscience than the Second. Together they plan to conceal
themselves, then ‘rush upon the fair, Force her to bliss, and
cure our wild despair’. The chorus (‘Righteous heav’n’)
threatens divine retribution.
Act 2
Following a brief scene for the absent Joacim, Susanna, her
spirits fainting ‘beneath the burning heat’, is filled with
longing for her absent husband. She bids her Attendant sing
synopsis
to her. As Susanna bathes in her garden stream, the Elders
seize their moment. After she repulses their advances (in the
trio ‘Away, ye tempt me both in vain’), they announce that they
have caught her in flagrante with ‘the youthful partner of her
stol’n embrace’. She is taken off for trial. Joacim, informed of
the charge by letter, hurries home.
Act 3
In the courtroom Susanna has already been condemned to
death after a show-trial. The oleaginous First Elder weeps
crocodile tears. Susanna is saved from the scaffold by the
youth Daniel, who emerges from the crowd and, like an
adolescent Solomon, exposes the Elders’ lies by asking each
separately under which tree the alleged act of adultery took
place. They give contradictory answers, and are in turn
sentenced to death. Joacim returns to ‘the joyful news of
chaste Susanna’s truth’. After a love duet the chorus sings
in praise of Susanna, ‘the chastest beauty that e’er grac’d
the earth’.
Synopsis © Richard Wigmore
7

Pascal Gély About
about the performers
tonight’s performers
William Christie conductor
William Christie’s pioneering work as
harpsichordist, conductor, musicologist
and teacher has led to a renewed
interest in Baroque music in France.
Born in America, he studied at
Harvard and Yale Universities before
moving to France in 1971, where he
founded Les Arts Florissants eight
years later. With the ensemble he has
explored many neglected or forgotten
works, both sacred and secular. As well
as championing the French Baroque,
ranging from Charpentier to Rameau,
via Couperin, Mondonville, Campra
and Montéclair, he is acclaimed in
Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, Mozart
and Haydn.
In the opera house, he has worked with
many renowned directors, including
Jean-Marie Villégier, Robert Carsen,
Alfredo Arias, Jorge Lavelli, Graham
8
Vick, Adrian Noble, Andrei Serban
and Luc Bondy. Last year Les Arts
Florissants began a collaboration with
the Teatro Real de Madrid, where the
ensemble will perform all the
Monteverdi operas over coming
seasons.
As a guest conductor William Christie
regularly appears at Glyndebourne
and with the Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra, as well as conducting
Zurich Opera in works by Gluck,
Rameau and Handel, and the Opéra
National de Lyon in Così fan tutte and
The Marriage of Figaro.
He is also committed to the
professional development of young
artists, and many of the music directors
of today’s Baroque ensembles began
their careers with Les Arts Florissants.
In 2002 he created Le Jardin des Voix,
an academy for young singers in
Caen, whose first three seasons
generated considerable international
interest.
As a conductor and harpsichordist,
William Christie has made over 70
recordings, many of which have
received awards.
William Christie acquired French
nationality in 1995. He is an Officier
Sylvain Godfroid
dans l’Ordre de la Légion d’Honneur
as well as Officier dans l’Ordre des
Arts et des Lettres. He was elected to
the Académie des Beaux-Arts in
November 2008.
Sophie Karthäuser soprano
Soprano Sophie Karthäuser studied at
the Guildhall School of Music &
Drama with Noelle Barker. She has
since been engaged by many leading
ensembles, including the Academy of
Ancient Music, Les Arts Florissants, La
Petite Bande, Les Folies Françoises,
Akademie für Alte Musik, Freiburg
Baroque Orchestra and the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra.
She has sung with conductors such as
Riccardo Chailly, William Christie,
Thomas Hengelbrock, René Jacobs,

Sigiswald Kuijken, Louis Langrée,
Kazushi Ono, Jérémie Rhorer,
Marcello Viotti and Christian
Zacharias. She will give concerts with
Cercle de l’Harmonie, the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra and the
Monteverdi Choir.
In 2003, she won the audience prize in
the Wigmore Hall’s Song Competition.
She has appeared in recital at the
Palais des Beaux-Arts (Brussels), La
Monnaie, Flanders Opera, Opéra de
Lille, Opéra de Nantes and at the
Cologne Philharmonie. Forthcoming
engagements include Wolf with
Stephan Loges at Opéra National du
Rhin and solo recitals in Waidhofen, at
the Frankfurt Opera House and the
Beaune Festival (France).
Sophie Karthäuser sang her first
Pamina (The Magic Flute) under
Jacobs and Susanna (The Marriage of
Figaro) under Christie. Further Mozart
projects include Ilia at the Aix-en-
Provence Festival, in Salzburg and
Bremen as well as Sandrina (La finta
giardiniera) in Vienna with Jacobs.
Other opera projects include the
title-role in Cavalli’s La Calisto under
Christophe Rousset and a Rameau
series with Christie in Aix-en-Provence.
Further concerts will take her to venues
such as the Musikverein, Carnegie
Hall, Théâtre des Champ-Élysées and
the Palais des Beaux-Arts.
Her discography includes a solo
album of Grétry arias, the complete
Mozart songs, Haydn’s Die Schöpfung
and Il Ritorno di Tobia and Handel’s
Faramondo.
Max Emanuel Cencic countertenor
Max Emanuel Cencic is one of the
leading countertenors of his
generation. Initially a member of the
Vienna Boys’ Choir, his career as a
countertenor began in 2001. This year
he makes his debut at La Monnaie,
Brussels (Cavalli’s La Calisto), at the
Bavarian State Opera (the title-role in
Tamerlano) and at the Semperoper,
about the performers
Dresden (Giulio Cesare). He has
also sung Ottone under Rinaldo
Alessandrini in Bordeaux and given
solo recitals in Vienna, Geneva, Tokyo,
Hamburg and Avignon. Next spring he
makes his debut with the Vienna State
Opera and at the Teatro Real, Madrid.
Max Emanuel Cencic regularly works
with notable conductors such as
William Christie, René Clemencic,
Alan Curtis, Diego Fasolis, Michael
Hofstetter, Eduardo López Banzo,
Andrea Marcon, Günter Neuhold,
Christophe Rousset and Jean-
Christophe Spinosi.
He is particularly in demand in the
operas of Handel and Vivaldi, and has
performed at the Teatro Carlo Felice in
Genoa, for Scottish National Opera,
at the Bayreuth Baroque Festival, at the
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Teatro
Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon, and
in Bremen, Torino and St Gallen,
among others.
In concert, Max Emanuel Cencic has
appeared at leading concert halls,
including those in Lisbon, Cologne,
Essen, Vienna, Potsdam, Wiesbaden,
Cremona, London, Amsterdam, Milan,
Avignon and Tokyo and in such
festivals as the Haydn Festival in
Eisenstadt, the Halle Handel Festival
9

Anne Dokter
about the performers
and at those in St Riquier, Uzès,
St Denis, Beaune and Froville.
His award-winning discography
includes Handel’s Faramondo,
Vivaldi’s Andromeda Liberata, a solo
disc of Rossini arias, cantatas by
Caldara and Scarlatti, The Vivaldi
Album and Cantata d’amore, plus a
DVD of Landi’s Il Sant’Alessio.
Maarten Koningsberger baritone
Maarten Koningsberger is one of the
leading baritones in his native Holland,
and has worked with renowned
modern- and period-instrument
ensembles throughout the Netherlands
as well as with Les Arts Florissants,
I Fiamminghi, Tafelmusik, Singapore
Symphony Orchestra and the
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
10
Among the conductors with whom he
has worked are William Christie, René
Jacobs, Ton Koopman, Reinbert de
Leeuw, Arnold Östman, Gennady
Rozhdestvensky, Ed Spanjaard, Jeffrey
Tate, Lucas Vis, Hans Vonk and Jan
Willem de Vriend.
He has appeared internationally in
operas by Debussy, Maderna, Menotti,
Monteverdi, Mozart, Offenbach,
Poulenc, Rameau, Richard Strauss and
others. He is also in demand as a
Lieder singer, and has appeared at
such prestigious venues as the
Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the
Wigmore Hall, and has also given
recitals in the Middle East, South
America and South Africa.
Recent and future engagements
include Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette for
Netherlands Opera, Stravinsky’s
Pulcinella with the Rotterdam
Philharmonic Orchestra, Purcell’s King
Arthur at the Holland Festival, concerts
with the Residentie Orchestra, a tour
with the Academy of Ancient Music,
and recitals in the Netherlands, USA
(including ,next month, Carnegie Hall),
Germany and France.
Maarten Koningsberger’s recordings
include Schubert Lieder, lute and
consort songs by composers such as
Byrd and Dowland, and cantatas by
Campra and van Blankenburg, as well
as operas and oratorios.
William Burden baritone
Born in Florida, baritone William
Burden completed his master’s degree
in vocal performance at Indiana
University. He was a member of the
Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Artist
programme.
In concert he has appeared with Les
Arts Florissants (Messiah with William
Christie in Paris, Barcelona and Lyon),
the Philadelphia and Minnesota
orchestras, the Berlin and Florida
Philharmonic orchestras and the BBC
and Houston Symphony orchestras. His
recordings include Barber’s Vanessa
and Chabrier songs.

In North America he has appeared
with the Metropolitan Opera, San
Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of
Chicago, Houston Grand Opera,
Seattle Opera, Opera Company of
Philadelphia, Florida Grand Opera,
Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera
and New York City Opera. He has sung
with Opéra de Paris, Opéra de
Bordeaux, the Théâtre du Châtelet,
Paris, Bavarian State Opera, Munich,
the Deutsche Staatsoper, Berlin, Teatro
Real, Madrid, Teatro alla Scala, Milan,
at the Saito Kinen Festival, Japan, and
for Glyndebourne Festival.
His repertoire includes the title-roles of
Faust, Pelléas et Mélisande, Roméo et
Juliette, The Rake’s Progress, Béatrice
et Bénédict, Candide and Acis and
Galatea. His roles include Nerone (The
Coronation of Poppaea), Aschenbach
(Death in Venice), Male Chorus (The
Rape of Lucretia), Alwa (Lulu) and Peter
Quint (The Turn of the Screw).
Highlights of 2009 include
performances with the BBC Symphony
Orchestra (Julietta), at La Monnaie (La
Belle Hélène), his first Don José
(Carmen) for Cincinnati Opera, Don
Ottavio for Glyndebourne Festival,
and, at the Edinburgh Festival, the titlerole
in Judas Maccabaeus.
Alan Ewing bass
The Irish bass Alan Ewing has in recent
years sung at the Berlin Staatsoper,
Zurich Opera House, Maggio
Musicale in Florence, Netherlands
Opera, Royal Opera House, Covent
Garden, the Aix-en-Provence Festival,
and in concert at the Salzburg and
Lucerne festivals, the Berlin
Konzerthaus, the Vienna Konzerthaus,
the Barbican and the Concertgebouw.
Conductors with whom he has worked
include Sir Colin Davis, Richard Hickox,
Philippe Jordan, Sir Charles
Mackerras, Jean-Claude Malgoire,
Paul McCreesh, Daniel Oren, Trevor
Pinnock and David Stern.
He is particularly in demand in
Handel’s virtuoso roles, and has
performed with Akademie für Alte
Musik, The English Concert, Freiburg
about the performers
Baroque Orchestra, Gabrieli Players,
Les Arts Florissants, Les Musiciens du
Louvre and Opera Fuoco, among
many others.
Other roles include Osmin (Die
Entführung aus dem Serail), Priam
and Panthée (Berlioz’s Les Troyens),
Seneca (The Coronation of Poppaea),
Sarastro (The Magic Flute), Leporello
(Don Giovanni), Sparafucile (Rigoletto),
Ferrando (Così fan tutte), Fafner
(The Ring cycle), Baron Ochs (Der
Rosenkavalier) and the title-roles in
Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and
Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, as well as
the three bass roles in Thomas Adès’s
Powder Her Face.
This Handel anniversary year has seen
Alan Ewing performing in Acis and
Galatea and Jephtha at the Lucerne
Festival, the Beaune Festival and at the
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and he
has previously worked with William
Christie and Les Arts Florissants on
many occasions, including on several
of their award-winning recordings.
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about the performers
David DQ Lee countertenor
The award-winning countertenor
David DQ Lee is a singer of great
versatility, performing repertoire
ranging from Baroque to
contemporary, and jazz to opera. He
regularly appears with leading
orchestras and opera companies and
has worked with such conductors as
Andrey Boreyko, Sergiu Comissiona,
Christoph Eschenbach, Edoardo
Müller, Carlos Miguel Prieto and
Timothy Vernon.
Among highlights of this season are
Death in Venice in Hamburg, Giulio
Cesare in Düsseldorf and Dresden, a
new production of The Coronation of
Poppaea in Cologne as well as the
current tour of Susanna. He has also
recently performed Handel’s
Belshazzar in concert in Pamplona
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under Martin Haselböck and in a new
production of Vivaldi’s Orlando
furioso in Basle, conducted by Andrea
Marcon.
In 2008 his Handel roles included
Arcane in a new production of Teseo
for the Komische Oper Berlin under
Alessandro de Marchi, David
(Belshazzar) at the Halle Handel
Festival under Haselböck, and
L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato
in Utrecht, conducted by Kenneth
Montgomery. He also sang Ruggiero
(Orlando furioso) under Marcon at the
Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
In the concert hall David DQ Lee has
performed many works by Handel,
including Semele, Israel in Egypt, Saul,
Joshua and Messiah, sacred choral
works by Vivaldi, Bach’s Christmas
Oratorio, Orff’s Carmina Burana,
Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and
Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to
Music, the latter for a gala concert at
the Ravinia Festival.
He has released a solo disc, Arianna
a Naxos, as well as appearing on a
CD of Bach cantatas with Montréal
Baroque.
Abdellah Lasri
Emmanuelle de Negri soprano
The soprano Emmanuelle de Negri
initially studied cello, before entering
the Nîmes Conservatoire, where she
developed her singing, focusing
particularly on Mozart and Rossini. This
was followed by studies at the Paris
Conservatoire, working simultaneously
on bel canto and Baroque repertoire
where she won first prize for her final
recital. She recently completed the
conservatoire’s postgraduate
programme, studying with Susan
Manoff and Olivier Reboul.
On stage Emmanuelle de Negri has
sung Barbarina (The Marriage of
Figaro), Cupid (Offenbach’s Orpheus
in the Underworld), Yniold (Pelléas et
Mélisande), Tonina (Salieri’s Prima la
musica poi le parole), Elena (Cavalli’s
Ercole amante), Serpetta (Mozart’s

La finta giardiniera), Oberto (Handel’s
Alcina), Miles (The Turn of the Screw),
First Grace (Belli’s Orfeo dolente),
Clorinda (La Cenerentola), Jeunesse
(Destouches’s Le Carnaval et la Folie),
Cleofide (Handel’s Poro), Despina
(Così fan tutte), Agnese (Pasquini’s
Il martirio di Sant’Agnese), Shepherd
Boy (Tosca) and Leona (Offenbach’s
La Belle Hélène).
Among the conductors with whom she
has worked are Alain Altinoglu, Gilbert
Bezzina, William Christie, Stéphane
Denève, Vincent Dumestre, Laurence
Equilbey, Gabriel Garrido, Philippe
Hui, Alessandro de Marchi, Zsolt Nagy,
Hervé Niquet, Emmanuel Olivier and
Jean-Yves Ossonce.
Emmanuelle de Negri has also
collaborated with prominent stage
directors, including Benoît Bénichou,
Gilles Bouillon, Vincent Boussard,
Claude Buchwald, François de
Carpentries, Emmanuelle Cordoliani,
Pierre Kuentz, Jacques Osinsky, Jeanne
Roth and Edouard Signolet.
Ludovic Provost baritone
The baritone Ludovic Provost was born
in Perpignan in 1975. He began his
musical studies at the age of 6,
graduating in 1996 with first prize in
clarinet from the Boulogne-Billancourt
Conservatoire. He subsequently
studied singing at the Centre de
Musique Baroque in Versailles
(led by Olivier Schneebeli), where
he participated in masterclasses
with Howard Crook, Maarten
Koningsberger and Noelle Barker.
In 2000 he joined the St Maur
Conservatoire, where he studied with
Michèle Seeberger as well as taking
masterclasses with Christophe Rousset
and the Dutch soprano Margreet
Honig, with whom he subsequently
studied in Amsterdam, in addition to
further masterclasses with Mark Tucker,
about the performers
Ann Murray and Anthony Legge,
among others.
During the past five years Ludovic
Provost’s roles have ranged from
Melisso (Handel’s Alcina), Curio (Giulio
Cesare) and Bostangis (Campra’s
L’Europe galante) via the title-roles in
Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The
Marriage of Figaro and Puccini’s
Gianni Schicchi to Demetrius (Britten’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream).
13

about the performers
Les Arts Florissants
The renowned vocal and instrumental
ensemble Les Arts Florissants was
founded in 1979 by William Christie,
and takes its name from an opera by
Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
Since the acclaimed production of Atys
by Lully at the Opéra Comique in Paris
in 1987, it has been in the field of opera
where Les Arts Florissants has found
most success. Notable productions
include works by Rameau (Les Indes
galantes in 1990 and 1999, Hippolyte
et Aricie in 1996, Les Boréades in 2003,
Les Paladins in 2004), Charpentier
(Médée in 1993 and 1994), Handel
(Orlando in 1993, Acis and Galatea in
1996, Semele in 1996, Alcina in 1999,
Hercules in 2004 and 2006), Purcell
(King Arthur in 1995, Dido and Aeneas
in 2006), Mozart (The Magic Flute in
1994, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at
the Opéra du Rhin in 1995) and
Monteverdi (Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria
at Aix-en-Provence in 2000, revived in
2002, L’incoronazione di Poppaea in
2005, and L’Orfeo at the Teatro Real
de Madrid in 2008).
Les Arts Florissants has an equally high
profile in the concert hall, giving
concert performances of operas
(Zoroastre and Les fêtes d’Hébé by
14
Rameau, Idomenée by Campra,
Jephté by Montéclair and L’Orfeo by
Rossi), as well as secular chamber
works (Actéon, Les plaisirs de Versailles
and La descente d’Orphée aux Enfers
by Charpentier and Dido and Aeneas
by Purcell) and sacred music (grands
motets by Rameau, Mondonville and
Desmarest) and Handel oratorios.
The ensemble has an impressive
discography of over 70 CD recordings,
most recently Haydn’s The Creation. Its
most recent DVD is Il Sant’Alessio by
Stefano Landi, filmed at the Théâtre de
Caen, where, for the past 15 years, the
Philippe Matsas
ensemble has been artist-in-residence.
Les Arts Florissants also tours widely
within France, and is a frequent
ambassador for French culture
abroad, regularly appearing at the
Brooklyn Academy, the Lincoln Center
in New York, the Barbican Centre and
the Vienna Festival.
Les Arts Florissants receive financial
support from the Ministry of Culture and
Communication, the City of Caen and the
Région Basse-Normandie. Their sponsor is
Imerys. Les Arts Florissants are artists in
residence at the Théâtre de Caen.
This production of Susanna is supported by
Imerys and Jean-Philippe Hottinger.

Les Arts Florissants Orchestra
Musical Director
William Christie
Executive Manager
Luc Bouniol-Laffont
Assistant to Musical
Director
Jonathan Cohen
Violin I
Florence Malgoire leader
Jean-Paul Burgos
Bernadette Charbonnier
Stéphanie de Failly
Myriam Gevers
Martha Moore
Tami Troman
Satomi Watanabe
Alice Julien Lafferière *
Violin II
Catherine Girard
Sophie Gevers-Demoures
Michèle Sauvé
George Willms
Juliette Roumailhac
Gabriel Ferry *
Viola
Galina Zinchenko
Simon Heyerick
Kayo Saito
Jean-Luc Thonnerieux
Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Sharp Print Limited;
advertising by Cabbell (tel. 020 8971 8450)
Please make sure that all digital watch alarms and mobile phones are switched off during the
performance. In accordance with the requirements of the licensing authority, sitting or standing
in any gangway is not permitted. Smoking is not permitted anywhere on the Barbican premises.
No eating or drinking is allowed in the auditorium. No cameras, tape recorders or any other
recording equipment may be taken into the hall.
Cello
David Simpson
basso continuo
Elena Sarah Andreyev
Ulrike Brütt
Brigitte Crépin
Damien Launay
Alix Verzier
Alice Coquart *
Double Bass
Jonathan Cable
basso continuo
Michael Greenberg
Franck Ratajczyk
Oboe
Pier Luigi Fabretti
Machiko Ueno
about the performers
Bassoon
Rhoda-Mary Patrick
Stephan von Hoff
Trumpet
Jean-François Madeuf
Philippe Genestier
Theorbo
Brian Feehan
basso continuo
Harpsichord/Organ
Béatrice Martin
* Arts Flo Junior
Répétiteur
Florian Carré
Barbican Centre
Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS
Administration 020 7638 4141
Box Office 020 7638 8891
Great Performers Last-Minute Concert
Information Hotline 0845 120 7505
www.barbican.org.uk
15

about the performers
Les Arts Florissants Choir
Soprano
Solange Añorga
Jeannette Best
Véronique Chevallier
Sophie Decaudaveine
Elodie Fonnard
Nicole Dubrovich
Maud Gnidzaz
Brigitte Pelote
Sheena Wolstencroft
Leila Zlassi
Héloïse Derrache *
16
2564 68686-3
William Christie &
Les Arts Florissants
In Celebration
6CD 30th Anniversary Collection
Mezzo-soprano
Dominique Favat
Brigitte Le Baron
Violaine Lucas
Countertenor
Jean-Paul Bonnevalle
Brian Cummings
Nicolas Domingues
Damien Ferrante *
Tenor
Nicolas Bauchau
Nicolas Maire
Jean-Yves Ravoux
Bruno Renhold
Maurizio Rossano
Michael Loughlin Smith
4509 98477-2
Purcell
Dido & Aeneas
Highlights and extracts from all the Erato recordings
Bass
Justin Bonnet
Fabrice Chomienne
Laurent Collobert
Christophe Gautier
David Le Monnier
Ludovic Provost
Marduk Serrano Lopez
Frits Vanhulle
Jérémie Delvert *
* Arts Flo Junior
0927 44655-2
Lully
Les Divertissements
de Versailles
Chorus Master
François Bazola
Language Coach
Alan Woodhouse
Sophie Decaudaveine
Find a complete range of William Christie & Les Arts Florissants’
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Rameau
Les Grands Motets
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