Biography (read more)
Christophe Rousset was born on 12 April 1961 in Avignon, France. He studied harpsichord at the Schola Cantorum de Paris with Huguette Dreyfus and then at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague with Bob van Asperen. At the age of twenty-two he won first prize at the seventh Bruges Harpsichord Competition, which established his reputation as a player of period instruments. In 1991 he founded his own ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques, which he has directed ever since. He is also active as a musicologist, specialising in opera and European music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
With Les Talens Lyriques, Rousset has become a central figure in the modern revival of French Baroque and Classical opera, appearing at the Paris Opera, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the Opéra Royal de Versailles, La Monnaie, the Theater an der Wien, the Teatro Real, Carnegie Hall and the Concertgebouw, and at the Aix-en-Provence and Beaune festivals. He has continued in parallel as a harpsichord soloist and chamber musician, and his complete recordings of the harpsichord works of Couperin, Rameau, d’Anglebert and Forqueray, together with his Bach discs, are regarded as reference versions. Institutions including the Musée de la Musique in Paris have entrusted historic instruments to him for recording projects. Teaching is a significant part of his work, and he leads masterclasses and academies for young musicians at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the CNSMD in Paris and the Académie d’Ambronay.
Sources: