Michael Spyres, Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset
Biography Michael Spyres, Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset
Michael Spyres
is one of the most outstanding tenors of his generation and appears at the leading international opera houses and concert halls as well as at festivals all over the world. His extensive repertoire is documented on numerous CDs and extends from the Baroque period to Mozart and Britten. He has earned particular acclaim for his bel canto and French roles.
Michael Spyres has made a number of hugely successful house debuts in recent years: as Faust (La Damnation de Faust) at the Metropolitan Opera, as Don Ramiro (La Cenerentola) at the Vienna State Opera, as Tito (La clemenza di Tito) at the Paris Opéra, as Hoffmann (Les Contes d’Hoffmann) at the Bavarian State Opera, as Orlando (Orlando paladino) at the Zurich Opera, as Licinius (La Vestale) at the Theater an der Wien, as Edgardo (Lucia di Lammermoor) for the Philadelphia Opera, as Vasco da Gama (L’Africaine) for the Frankfurt Opera and as Gualtiero (Il pirata) at the Grand Théâtre de Genève. He has also sung the title role in Benvenuto Cellini at the BBC Proms, at the Berlioz Festival at La Côte-Saint-André, at the Berlin Philharmonie and at the Philharmonie de Paris, Pollione (Norma) for the Zurich Opera and at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Florestan (Fidelio) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and Fernand (La Favorite) in Houston and at the Liceu in Barcelona, where he has also been heard as Mozart’s Mitridate.
Other highlights of Michael Spyres’s career have been Il viaggio a Reims and La donna del lago at La Scala, Milan, La donna del lago and Mitridate at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Liceu, La gazza ladra at the Dresden Semperoper, Guillaume Tell and Mitridate at La Monnaie in Brussels, La traviata at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Mitridate and Carmen at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, La Damnation de Faust and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis at the BBC Proms, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and La donna del lago, Ciro in Babilonia and Aureliano in Palmira at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.
Michael Spyres was born in Mansfield, Missouri, and studied in the United States and, later, at the Conservatory in Vienna. He first came to international prominence in 2008 as Rossini’s Otello at the Rossini Festival in Wildbad and as Tamino at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. Among the conductors with whom he has worked are Andrew Davis, Mark Elder, John Eliot Gardiner, Edward Gardner, Valery Gergiev, Emmanuelle Haïm, Fabio Luisi, Michele Mariotti, Riccardo Muti, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Kirill Petrenko, Evelino Pidò, Christophe Rousset, Simone Young and Alberto Zedda.
Christophe Rousset
During his youth in Aix-en-Provence, Christophe Rousset developed a passion for the Baroque aesthetic. At the age of thirteen he decided not to study archaeology but to satisfy his keen interest in the discovery of the past through music instead, by taking up the harpsichord. That took him to the Schola Cantorum in Paris, where he studied with Huguette Dreyfus, then to the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, to work with Bob van Asperen. At twenty-two he won the prestigious First Prize, as well as the Public Prize, in the Seventh Bruges Harpsichord Competition (1983).
At Aix he also developed his love for opera and the stage by attending rehearsals at the Festival d’Art Lyrique. It was there that opera gave him his first strong emotions, which still guide him in his work today.
Christophe Rousset’s performances as a harpsichordist soon attracted the attention of the international press as well as record companies. He became a member of Les Arts Florissants, then Il Seminario Musicale, before embarking on a career as a music director, which led him to form his own ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques, in 1991. Firing the ensemble with his enthusiasm as a conductor and researcher, he was soon among the front runners of Baroque, acclaimed in France and internationally.
Engagements at the world’s Baroque festivals, numerous recordings (Harmonia Mundi, L’Oiseau-Lyre, Fnac Music, Emi-Virgin, Decca, Naïve and Ambroisie), film soundtracks (Farinelli)… within a few seasons Christophe Rousset had established his reputation as a talented, industrious and conscientious young director with a passion for the voice and for opera, an indefatigable discoverer of original scores (Antigona by Traetta, La Capricciosa Corretta by Martin y Soler, Armida Abbandonata by Jommelli, La Grotta di Trofonio by Salieri, Temistocle, by Jean-Chrétien Bach …), a soloist and chamber musician always at his peak, and a patient and untiring teacher.
His various projects lead him to explore European music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (opera, cantata, oratorio, sonata, symphony, concerto, suite…), constantly shedding light on all the forms that played a part in the history of music before Rossini, and ‘serving’ music in a very personal way.
His many recordings include the complete harpsichord works of François Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, d’Anglebert and Forqueray, and his interpretations of works by J. S. Bach (Partitas, Goldberg Variations, Harpsichord Concertos, English Suites, French Suites, Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann ) are regarded as references. With his ensemble Les Talens Lyriques, his great successes on disc include Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, Mozart’s Mitridate, Overtures by Rameau, and Persée and Roland by Lully.
Christophe Rousset is an Officier des Arts et Lettres, and “Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Mérite”.
