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In Valenciennes, northern France, Yannick Lemaire and the ensemble Harmonia Sacra have been spearheading the festival “Embar(o)quement immédiat” for the past twenty years (anniversary edition, 6–31 May), and more recently an ambitious project to establish a music centre at the Hôtel de Barneville. In this former mining region, could the city be emerging as a major new hub for early music?
At 80, Paul Van Nevel continues to view polyphony as an art of time: balancing rhythmic precision, the legacy of Gregorian chant, and an unwillingness to compromise, he looks back on fifty-five years of exploration with the Huelgas Ensemble, at the heart of a repertoire that is as essential as it is underappreciated.
In Cleveland as in London, Apollo’s Fire defies the narratives of classical music’s decline. Founded in 1992 by harpsichordist and conductor Jeannette Sorrell, the ensemble has, in just a few decades, established itself as one of the most dynamic forces in the American Baroque landscape. Balancing fidelity to Affekt with bold programming, it continues to attract ever-growing audiences, driven by a vibrant stage presence and an undiminished artistic vision.
The ensemble Les Surprises and its founder and musical director, Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas, are celebrating their 15th anniversary in 2026, notably with a new production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, on the bill since February. This emblematic work of the Baroque repertoire is reimagined by the ensemble in an original staged form: an all-female cast, musicians integrated into the action, spoken texts, and a choreographic dimension.
Do you know about the “trunk arias” that opera singers carried with them in their luggage in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? In this third instalment, we set off across Europe, in search of Italian opera. After the journey of church chant in the early Christian centuries and the travels of Franco-Flemish music during the Renaissance, this episode invites us to discover a genre newly born in Florence which, in less than a century, conquered all of Europe.
Trained in Caracas and then at the Conservatoire de Paris, the sopranist Samuel Mariño, with his crystal-clear, high-pitched voice, recounts how he failed his diploma because he was not a countertenor, how he sources his flamboyant stage costumes in thrift shops, and why he dreams of a kinder and more benevolent world than the one in which he spent his childhood.
With “Reines”, Véronique Gens and the ensemble Les Surprises offer a journey through French opera, from Lully to the late eighteenth century. Between figures of power and wounded heroines, the programme unfolds a true dramaturgy, shaped by a collective approach and a keen sense of musical theatre.
With his Concerto 1700, violinist Daniel Pinteño continues his exploration of 18th-century Spanish musical heritage. His latest recording of Gaetano Brunetti’s “String Quartets, Op. 3” reveals a court composer whose writing is both refined and full of wit.
