John Eliot Gardiner |

John Eliot Gardiner

He specializes mainly in the performance of early music. Interpreter of the works of Handel, Monteverdi, Rameau and others. Organizer of the Monteverdi evenings in Cambridge. In 1968 he founded the Monteverdi Orchestra, then the English Ensemble of Baroque Soloists. Since 1981 Artistic Director of the Handel Festival in Göttingen. In 1983-88 he was chief conductor of the Lyon Opera. Of the major achievements, we note the staging of Gluck’s opera Iphigenia in Tauris (1973) at Covent Garden, the first production (in his own version) of Rameau’s unfinished opera The Boreades (or Abaris, op. in 1751). Among the many recordings made with his ensemble are Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice (Philips), Mozart’s Idomeneo (soloists Rolfe-Johnson, Otter, McNair, etc., Deutsche Grammophon), Handel’s Acis and Galatea (Archiv Produktion) .

E. Tsodokov, 1999