Akademie Versailles 2022

An artist of international renown and an accomplished teacher, British tenor and conductor Paul Agnew has made his mark on all the main international stages as a specialist in the music of the 17th and 18th centuries and as the performer of choice for the high-tenor roles of the French Baroque.

After studying at Magdalen College, Oxford, Paul Agnew became the performer of choice for the haute-contre roles of the French Baroque repertoire. He was acclaimed in the major roles of Rameau’s operas (Platée, Les Boréades, Les Indes galantes). He is regularly invited to festivals such as the Edinburgh festival, the BBC Proms or the Lufthansa Festival.

He frequently sings with groups such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Komische Oper Berlin, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Gabrieli Consort and Players. He appears with conductors such as William Christie, Marc Minkowski, Tom Koopman, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Philippe Herreweghe and Emmanuelle Haïm.

In 2007, Paul Agnew’s career took a new turn when he began conducting certain projects for Les Arts Florissants. From 2011 to 2015, he undertook a complete cycle of Monteverdi’s madrigals,
a project for which he directed nearly 100 concerts throughout Europe and made three recordings for Harmonia Mundi the first of which won the Gramophone Award in 2016.

He has conducted Les Arts Florissants in such productions as the ballet Doux Mensonges (Opéra de Paris), a new production of Rameau’s Platée (Theater an der Wien, Paris’s Opéra Comique and New York’s Lincoln Center), and created a new production of L’Orfeo as part of the celebration of Claudio Monteverdi’s 450th anniversary – not to mention many concert programs.

He is artistic director of the Festival de Printemps – Les Arts Florissants which takes place in churches throughout the region of the Vendée, since its creation in 2017.

Since 2019, Paul Agnew is Musical Co-Director of Les Arts Florissants. As a guest conductor, Paul Agnew regularly conducts orchestras such as the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg, the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin.

Recent highlights also include a new production of Platée staged by Rolando Villazón at the Semperoper Dresden, and a new reading of Gesualdo’s six books of madrigals with Les Arts Florissants also recorded by Harmonia Mundi, the first volume of which won the Gramophone Award in 2020.