Véronique Gens, Ensemble Les Surprises & Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas
Biography Véronique Gens, Ensemble Les Surprises & Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas
Véronique Gens
After having dominated the Baroque scene for more than a decade, Véronique Gens went on to establish a solid international reputation and is now considered one of the finest interpreters of Mozart and the French repertory.
One of the flagship roles of her career, Donna Elvira in the production of Don Giovanni by Peter Brook and Claudio Abbado at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, brought her worldwide recognition. Her repertory comprises the leading Mozart roles (Countess, Vitellia, Fiordiligi etc.) and the great roles of tragédie lyrique (including Iphigénie en Tauride, Iphigénie en Aulide and Alceste) but also heroines of a later period such as Alice Ford (Falstaff), Eva (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Madame Lidoine (Dialogues des Carmélites) and Missia (La Veuve joyeuse). Véronique Gens also gives numerous concerts and recitals in a wide-ranging repertory all over the world, notably in Paris, Dresden, Berlin, Beijing, Vienna, Prague, London, Tanglewood, Stockholm, Moscow, Geneva and Edinburgh.
She has performed on the world’s foremost operatic stages, among them the Opéra National de Paris, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Liceu in Barcelona, the Teatro Real in Madrid, De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam and the Aixen-Provence, Salzburg and Glyndebourne festivals.
In 1999, she was voted Vocal Artist of the Year at the Victoires de la Musique Classique. Her many recordings (more than eighty CDs and DVDs) have received several international prizes: most recently, her album of French mélodies, Néère won a Gramophone Award in 2016, while Visions obtained an International Classical Music Award and an International Opera Award in 2018. Also La Reyne de Chypre by Halévy obtained a Gramophone Award in 2019, in the Opera category.
Véronique Gens is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
Les Surprises
is a Baroque ensemble of flexible configuration, founded in 2010 by viol player Juliette Guignard and organist and harpsichordist Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas. The ensemble borrows its name from Rameau’s opera-ballet Les Surprises de l’Amour, placing it under the aegis of that great composer’s lucky star, and its aim is to explore operatic music in all its shapes and forms. In taking on the group’s artistic direction, Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas wishes to contribute to the rediscovery of the Baroque repertory, to enrich it with new interpretations, and to explore the wealth of orchestral sonorities that is made possible by the use of period instruments.
The working activity of Les Surprises is firmly based on musicological and historical research, Louis Noël Bestion de Camboulas is keen to recover and realize music scores that have not emerged from the archive of the Bibliothèque nationale since the 18th century.
Les Surprises has already made twelve recordings for Ambronay Éditions, Alpha Classics and Harmonia Mundi which have received many critical plaudits in the French and international press, including a FFFF award from Télérama and a ‘Diamond’ from Opéra Magazine.
Since its formation the ensemble has appeared in many concert halls and festivals, not just across Europe but worldwide: at the Opéra Royal de Versailles, the Auditorium of Radio France, Montpellier Opera, the Festival of Ambronay, the Sinfonia Festival in Périgord, the Festival of Saintes, and the Rencontres musicales de Vézelay – as well as in Germany, Belgium, Britain, Lebanon and Singapore.
Louis-Noel Bestion de Camboulas
Born in 1989, Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas studies the organ with François Espinasse, Willem Jansen, Michel Bourcier and Liesbeth Schlumberger. He also studies the harpsichord with Yves Rechsteiner and Catherine Latzarus, and the composition with Jean-Baptiste Robin. He is awarded a Master of the Conservatoire National Supérieur Musique et Danse de Lyon. He has the opportunity to work with differents famous teacher like Louis Robilliard, Wolfgang Zerer, Loïc Mallié…
In 2009, he is the prize-winner of the “Grand-Prix d’orgue Jean-Louis Florentz, Académie des Beaux-Arts” in the Cathedral of Angers, France. Then in September 2011, he is the first prize-winner of the “Gottfried-Silbermann orgelwettbewerb” in Freiberg, Deutschland.
In 2009, he created the baroque ensemble “Les Surprises”, wich play French and German music of the XVII° and the XVIII° century’s. With this ensemble, he plays differents concerts in Holland, France and Italy. Varying the musical experiments, he occurs in soloist (France, Deutschland, Italy… ), and with baroque ensemble, or with choirs, or in theatrical show. He also plays with the “Orchestre d’Auvergne” conduct by Arie van Beek.
In 2009, he was the harpsichordist of the “Orchestre Français des Jeunes Baroques”, leading by Paul Agnew, then in 2010 he performed with the “Académie Baroque Européenne d’Ambronay” conduct by Hervé Niquet.
