Blondeel, Cutting, Abadie, Namotte, Chœur de Chambre de Namur, A Nocte Temporis & Reinoud Van Mechelen
Biography Blondeel, Cutting, Abadie, Namotte, Chœur de Chambre de Namur, A Nocte Temporis & Reinoud Van Mechelen
Gwendoline Blondeel
The Belgian soprano is a sought-after interpreter of 17th- and 18th-century music. She is not limited to this: the title role in Delibes' "Lakmé," Olympia in "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," Eurydice in Offenbach's "Orphée aux Enfers," and Honegger's "Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher" are also part of her repertoire. The past two seasons have been particularly eventful for her, with her debut at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam under William Christie and concerts at the Philharmonie Berlin and the Elbphilharmonie with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and Vox Luminis. She made her US debut at Opera Lafayette, as La Folie in the first modern revival of Rameau's "Io." She has sung Jonathas in Charpentier's opera "David et Jonathas" at several stages in France and Luxembourg. She is a regular guest at the Opera in the Palace of Versailles, making two role debuts this season: Frasquita in Bizet's "Carmen" and Marie in Donizetti's "La Fille du Régiment." She is artist in residence at the 2024 Wallonie Festival.
Guy Cutting
British tenor Guy Cutting is an established and sought-after interpreter of important Baroque composers. Cutting regularly collaborates with internationally renowned artists of historically informed performance practice, including Philippe Herreweghe, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, John Butt, Paul McCreesh, Jeffrey Thomas, and Jos van Veldhoven, as well as with the new generation of conductors and directors such as Jonathan Cohen, Laurence Cummings, Leonardo García Alarcón, Shunske Sato, Robert Howarth, David Bates, Steven Devine, and Reinoud van Mechelen.
Guy Cutting has performed with, among others, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (including his BBC Proms debut with Johann Sebastian Bach's Mass in B minor), the Academy of Ancient Music, the Monteverdi Choir, the Collegium Vocale Gent, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Gabrieli Consort, the Nederlandse Bachvereniging, the Swedish Baroque Orchestra, the Real Filharmonia de Galicia, and the American Bach Soloists.
With Kristian Bezuidenhout, Cutting has performed Franz Schubert (released on OAE Player) and presented recitals by Ivor Gurney and George Butterworth at the Oundle International Music Festival, as well as by Benjamin Britten and Gerald Finzi at the Clifton International Festival of Music with pianist Hannah Ely. Cutting has also given recitals on international stages, including songs by Henry Purcell in Shizuoka, Japan, and at The Music Room in London. He is a member of the vocal quartet Damask, which performs 19th- and 20th-century chamber music repertoire and commissions new works for vocal quartet. He has recorded Domenico Scarlatti and George Frideric Handel for the Avie label, and recordings of works by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, François Couperin, John Blow, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have been released on the Novum label.
Cutting was a chorister and later a Choral Fellow at New College, Oxford, where he earned a first-class degree in music. In 2013, he was the inaugural recipient of the American Bach Soloists' Jeffrey Thomas Award and has been named "Rising Star of the Enlightenment."
Future projects include debuts with the English Chamber Orchestra under Nicholas Kraemer ("Messiah"), the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra under Marcus Creed (Purcell), the Dunedin Consort under John Butt ("Messiah"), Gli Angeli Genève under Stephan MacLeod, and several Bach projects with the Collegium Vocale Gent under Philippe Herreweghe.
Lisandro Abadie
Bass-baritone, was born in Buenos Aires. He studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Lucerne University of Music and Performing Arts, and in 2006 he was awarded the Edwin Fischer Memorial Prize. Abadie has sung under the baton of renowned conductors such as William Christie, Laurence Cummings, Francesco Corti, Rubén Dubrovsky, Andreas Reize, Václav Luks, Tōnu Kaljuste, Skip Sempé, Paul Agnew, Paul Goodwin, and Vincent Dumestre. He has participated in numerous recordings and is also active as a researcher, translator, and lecturer in the field of historical performance practice.
Lisandro Abadie was born in Buenos Aires, where he began his vocal studies. He continued his studies in Switzerland at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Lucerne University of Music and Performing Arts, and was awarded the Edwin Fischer Memorial Prize in 2006. Abadie has performed under the direction of renowned conductors such as William Christie, Laurence Cummings, Václav Luks, Francesco Corti, Rubén Dubrovsky, Tōnu Kaljuste, Andreas Reize, Jordi Savall, Paul Agnew, Skip Sempé, Vincent Dumestre, and Geoffroy Jourdain.
He has collaborated with numerous major ensembles, including Les Arts Florissants, Collegium 1704, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Les Talens Lyriques, Le Poème Harmonique, La Tempête, Ensemble Inégal, La Risonanza, and a nocte temporis. He has collaborated with lutenist Mónica Pustilnik and pianist and composer Paul Suits, and performed several stage projects with director Benjamin Lazar.
His recent stage productions include Charpentier's "Médée," Rossini's "La Cenerentola," "Arsilda," Monteverdi's Trilogy, "Alcione," "Phaëton," "L'Europe Galante," and "Les Fées du Rhin." Recordings of his interpretations include Handel's "Siroe," Lully's "Phaëton" and "Cadmus et Hermione," Handel's "Music for Queen Caroline," Pasquini's "L'ombra di Solimano" (bass cantatas), Monteverdi's madrigals, "Vespro," and "L'incoronazione di Poppea." A total of approximately 60 CD and DVD recordings, as well as numerous TV and internet broadcasts, have documented his work as a soloist.
In addition to his stage career, Abadie is also dedicated to researching and writing on the history of singing and vocal technique. He is intensively involved in teaching and gives master classes with William Christie in Thiré, at the Balthasar Neumann Academy in Fontainebleau and Havana, as well as at conservatories in France and Germany. He also participates in the Monteverdi Madrigal Week in Venice. In 2014, he made his debut at the Opéra de Paris and the Teatro Real in Madrid in Charpentier's "Médée" under the direction of William Christie. Since 2019, he has been teaching at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.
Reinoud van Mechelen
completed his vocal studies at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels in 2012 in the class of Dina Grossberger. In 2017, he was awarded the Caecilia Prize for "Young Musician of the Year" by the Union of Belgian Composers. Since 2011, he has been a member of William Christie and Paul Agnew's "Le Jardin des Voix," which subsequently led to his becoming a regular soloist with "Les Arts Florissants." He collaborates with Baroque ensembles such as Collegium Vocale Gent, Le Concert Spirituel, Le Concert d'Astrée, Les Talens Lyriques, Pygmalion, Le Poème Harmonique, B'Rock, Ricercar Consort, Scherzi Musicali, and Hespèrion XXI, and performs in the most prestigious concert halls. His recent and future projects include Orphée in Gluck's »Orphée et Eurydice« (Paris version) at the Philharmonie de Paris with Les Arts Florissants, Les Boréades (Abaris) for a European tour, »Médée« (Jason) at the Opéra national de Paris and at the Teatro Real in Madrid, »Aty«s (title role) with Les Talens lyriques in Versailles and in Vienna. His discography includes, among many other recordings, six solo albums for Alpha Classics with the ensemble a nocte temporis, which he founded himself: "Erbame Dich" (2016), "Clérambault, cantates françaises" (2018), "The Dubhlinn Gardens" (Irish folk songs, 2019), "Dumesny, haute-contre de Lully" (2019), "Jéliote, haute-contre de Rameau" (2021) and "Legros, haute-contre de Gluck" (2023).
