External links
- Bach-cantatas.com: Howard Crook - pictures
- Howard Crook at IMDb
Howard Crook (born June 15, 1947) is an American lyric tenor who has lived and worked in the Netherlands and France since the early 1980s.
He was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, and educated at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio and then University of Illinois, where he received a master's degree in music, specialising in opera. He worked in theatre and mime for a few years before becoming a professional singer after winning second prizes in the vocal competitions of Paris and 's-Hertogenbosch.
He began to specialize in early music and has performed and recorded with the leading conductors; he has performed Leclair's Scylla et Glaucus , Berlioz's Les nuits d'été and Bach's St Matthew Passion with John Eliot Gardiner; with Trevor Pinnock, Handel's Messiah and with Roger Norrington, Henry Purcell's The Fairy-Queen .
He has sung the solos in the large-scale works of Bach and the major tenor roles in most of the operas of Lully, Rameau, Haydn and Mozart. The high-tenor roles of the French Baroque are his speciality: he has performed Charpentier's Funeral Music for Maria Theresa (H.409 & H.331) and 9 Leçons de Ténèbres; with Louis Devos; Lully's Atys with William Christie; Lully's Armide with Philippe Herreweghe; Lully's Alceste , Rameau's Castor et Pollux and Rameau's Pigmalion , amongst others, with conductors such as Marc Minkowski.
He taught baroque singing at the CNR conservatory in Paris, and regularly gave masterclasses. He is retired.
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the 18th century. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer of his time for the harpsichord, alongside François Couperin.
William Lincoln Christie is an American-born French conductor and harpsichordist. He is a specialist in baroque repertoire and is the founder of the ensemble Les Arts Florissants.
Noémi Rime is a French soprano. She regularly appears in opera productions by William Christie's Les Arts Florissants ensemble. Her roles have included Cleone in Médée, Dido in Dido and Aeneas, and Fatime in Les Indes galantes. She currently teaches on the faculty of the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Poitiers.
The haute-contre was the primary French operatic tenor voice, predominant in French Baroque and Classical opera, from the middle of the seventeenth century until the latter part of the eighteenth century.
Marc Minkowski is a French conductor of classical music, especially known for his interpretations of French Baroque works, and is the current general director of Opéra national de Bordeaux. His mother, Mary Anne (Wade), is American, and his father was Alexandre Minkowski, a Polish-French professor of pediatrics and one of the founders of neonatology. Marc Minkowski is a Chevalier du Mérite.
Christophe Rousset is a French harpsichordist and conductor, who specializes in the performance of Baroque music on period instruments. He is also a musicologist, particularly of opera and European music of the 17th and 18th centuries and is the founder of the French music ensemble Les Talens Lyriques.
Jean-Paul Fouchécourt is a French tenor, mostly as an opera singer. He was born on 30 August 1958 at Blanzy in the Burgundy region. He is best known for singing French Baroque music, especially the parts called in French haute-contre, written for a very high tenor voice with no falsetto singing.
Hippolyte et Aricie was the first opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau. It was premiered to great controversy by the Académie Royale de Musique at its theatre in the Palais-Royal in Paris on October 1, 1733. The French libretto, by Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, is based on Racine's tragedy Phèdre. The opera takes the traditional form of a tragédie en musique with an allegorical prologue followed by five acts. Early audiences found little else conventional about the work.
Les Arts Florissants is a Baroque musical ensemble in residence at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France. The organization was founded by conductor William Christie in 1979. The ensemble derives its name from the 1685 opera Les Arts florissants by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The organization consists of a chamber orchestra of period instruments and a small vocal ensemble. Current notable members include soprano Danielle de Niese and tenor Paul Agnew, who has served as assistant conductor since 2007. Jonathan Cohen is also on the conducting staff; Christie remains the organization's Artistic Director.
Platée (Plataea) is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Jean-Philippe Rameau with a libretto by Adrien-Joseph Le Valois d'Orville. Rameau bought the rights to the libretto Platée ou Junon Jalouse by Jacques Autreau (1657–1745) and had d'Orville modify it. The ultimate source of the story is a myth related by the Greek writer Pausanias in his Guide to Greece.
French opera is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen. Many foreign-born composers have played a part in the French tradition as well, including Lully, Gluck, Salieri, Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Offenbach.
Paul Agnew is a Scottish operatic tenor and conductor.
The French musical ensemble Les Talens Lyriques was created in 1991 in Paris, France, by the harpsichordist and orchestral conductor Christophe Rousset. This instrumental and vocal formation derives its name from the subtitle of Les fêtes d'Hébé (1739) an opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau.
Agnès Mellon is a French soprano who specializes in baroque music.
Topi Lehtipuu is a Finnish operatic tenor. He has sung a variety of roles from different periods, including the title role in Benjamin Britten's Albert Herring at the Finnish National Opera, several roles in Mozart operas, including Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, both at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, and Ferrando in Così fan tutte at the 2006 Glyndebourne Festival. He has also appeared in Handel's Ariodante, as Hylas in Berlioz' Les Troyens, and the Creature in the 2019 world première of Mark Grey's Frankenstein at La Monnaie in Brussels. He has worked with other well-known conductors, such as William Christie, Michel Corboz, René Jacobs, Simon Rattle, and Christophe Rousset. Since 2010 Lehtipuu has been the artistic director of Turku Music Festival.
Donna Brown is a Canadian soprano opera singer.
Anders J. Dahlin is a Swedish tenor. He studied at the Music Conservatory Falun in Sweden, at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, and at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.
Hugo Reyne is a contemporary French recorder player, oboist and conductor. He is the founder and music director of La Simphonie du Marais.
Bernard Deletré is a French operatic bass-baritone.
