At the Montpellier Radio France Festival, William Christie and his Arts Florissants are playing to a full house

Although it has somewhat reduced its sails over time in terms of duration, the Festival de Radio France in Montpellier, which marks its fortieth edition in 2025, has maintained its course of artistic excellence, attracting ever-increasing audience figures. This is the case of the concert which, on Tuesday, July 8, hosted William Christie and his Arts florissants in a hall at the Corum des grands soirs, in the original 1707 version of the first oratorio written by a 22-year-old Handel, Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno . in other words The Triumph of Time and Disillusionment .

Created in Rome on an edifying text by Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, this allegory of a memento mori ("remember that you will die") in music, a vast meditation on the theme of the transience of life, joins the cohort of pictorial vanities, the unfolding roses of poets (Ronsard), and philosophical expectations (from Epicurus to Heidegger).

William Christie is now a slim young man of 80. He is surrounded by his musicians and four singers arranged in pairs. At the front, dressed in black, are the advocates of God and contrition: tenor James Way (Time) and contralto Jasmin White (Disillusionment). At the back, in pretty pastel blue and pink dresses, incarnations of lightness and enjoyment, are mezzo Rebecca Leggett (Pleasure) and soprano Julie Roset (Beauty). The latter has sworn allegiance to Pleasure. She will be overtaken by Time and Disillusionment.

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