In this 2018 performance of Handel’s 'Rinaldo,' the knight Rinaldo embarks on a quest to rescue his beloved Almirena from the sorceress Armida set during the first Crusades.

Stage director Vincent Huguet takes up eternal themes—liberation and courage, devotion and doubt, tragedy and acceptance—to stage three histoires sacrées (sacred histories) written by Marc-Antoine Charpentier more than 300 years ago. The economical use of a small instrumental ensemble over Latin vocal lines creates space for sublime surprises: more than abrupt mood changes or an unexpected fortissimo, we become attuned to the slightest dissonance, the delicate softness of instruments in unison, the briefest moments of silence. After three centuries, the drama of the work hits just as potently in the 21st century.

For his first appearance in the pit in Paris with his Artaserse ensemble, Philippe Jaroussky has chosen a masterpiece that he knows well, having sung the role of Sesto on numerous occasions, notably in the highly acclaimed Salzburg production alongside Cecilia Bartoli. As for the staging, we will welcome for the first time on Avenue Montaigne a Venetian who is used to the greatest European stages and who has undertaken his first Handel, Alcina, in the summer of 2019 in Salzburg with Ruggiero... Philippe Jaroussky. Everyone agrees on his ability to imagine delicate and highly effective dramaturgical worlds (his Barber of Seville for the Paris Opera is an irresistible visual translation of Rossini's frenzied score). His debut in opera seria with Alcina also showed his intelligence in giving coherence and emotion to the demanding arias da capo. On stage, a team familiar with the Théàtre des Champs-Elysées and this repertoire, led by a very fine trio of French women.

On Thursday 2 May 2019, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, led by John Eliot Gardiner, brought a new production of Semele to “London’s oldest new theatre” at Alexandra Palace. This concert-staging of “Handel’s sexiest opera”, directed by Thomas Guthrie, was the only London date on a prestigious European tour. Featuring a young, glamorous cast of international soloists, the performance provided London audiences with a fuller version of the work, notably with some passages by Handel very rarely heard in modern performances.

Raphaël Pichon and the Pygmalion Ensemble in concert in Arnstadt's Oberkirche, Johann Sebastian Bach's ancestral church.

Raphaël Pichon and the Pygmalion ensemble join forces with a magnificent vocal ensemble to perform Johann Sebastian Bach's cantata Actus Tragicus, set to a work by Johann Michael Bach. Program : Johann Michael Bach - Unser Leben ist siebenzig Jahre Jean-Sébastien Bach - Cantate Actus Tragicus BWV 106 (extraits)

For their final concert on Les Chemins de Bach, Raphaël Pichon and the Pygmalion ensemble perform Bach's short masses and motets in Arnstadt's Bachkirche.

Three hundred years old and as timely as ever, Handel's monumental Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt) arrives at the 2025 Salzburg Festival in a new staging by the audacious, award-winning Dmitri Tcherniakov! When Caesar (Christophe Dumaux) comes to Egypt on the hunt for his enemy Pompey, he discovers that the pharaoh Ptolemy (Yuriy Mynenko) has beaten him to the punch, setting Pompey's son Sextus (Federico Fiorio) on a mission for vengeance — all while Ptolemy's sister Cleopatra (Olga Kulchynska) schemes to take the throne for herself, leading her directly into the path of Caesar… This tale of uncompromising rivalries and the corrupting thrall of political power is animated by one of Handel's finest scores, majestic in the hands of expert Baroque ensemble Le Concert d'Astrée under their celebrated founder Emmanuelle Haïm.