Paul O’Dette, BEMF Artistic Director, lute, theorbo, Baroque guitar, has been called “the clearest case of genius ever to touch his instrument”, Toronto Globe and Mail. His performance at any of the major international festivals in Boston, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Berkeley, Utrecht, London, Bath, Paris, Montpellier, Bremen, Dresden, Munich, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Milano, Geneva, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Oslo, Córdoba, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Melbourne, etc. has often been singled out as the highlight of those events. Though best known for his recitals and recordings of virtuoso solo lute music, Paul O’Dette maintains an active international career as an ensemble musician as well, performing with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, William Christie, Gustav Leonhardt, Christopher Hogwood, Jordi Savall, Andrew Parrott, Nigel Rogers, Bruce Dickey, and Ellen Hargis. He recently guest-directed Tafelmusik and the Portland Baroque Orchestra in programs of Italian concertos for lute and mandolin. He has been heard on radio and television broadcasts throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia, and Japan. He is a member of the acclaimed continuo ensemble Tragicomedia, whose first recording for harmonia mundi, Capritio: 17th-century Italian Instrumental Improvisations, was released to coincide with the opening of the 2001 Boston Early Music Festival. Of late, he has been active conducting Baroque opera. Together with Stephen Stubbs, he led performances of the BEMF production of Luigi Rossi’s L’Orfeo at Tanglewood, in Boston, and at Drottningholm (1997), then they directed Cavalli’s Ercole Amante in BEMF’s Boston, Tanglewood, and Utrecht appearances (1999). Later that same summer, they produced Provenzale’s La Stellidaura Vendicata at the Vadstena Academy, Sweden. O’Dette and Stubbs opened the inaugural Festival Vancouver (2000) with a highly-acclaimed production of Monteverdi’s l’Orfeo followed by a new production of Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea for the same festival in 2002.

In addition to his activities as a performer, Paul O’Dette is an avid researcher. He has published numerous articles on issues of historical performance practice and co-authored the Dowland entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Stubbs and O’Dette are writing a book on Baroque vocal practice.

O’Dette has made more than 100 recordings, many of which have been nominated for Gramophone’s Record of the Year Award. Recent solo releases include Alla Venetiana: Virtuoso Lute Music from 16th-Century Venice (a Classic CD Choice), and Robin Hood: Elizabethan Ballad Settings for Lute, Cittern, and Orpharion. His newest CD, The Royal Lewters, has won a Diapason D’Or “Chez du Monde de la Musique”, 5 stars in BBC Music Magazine and 10/10

ClassicsToday.com. He records for harmonia mundi usa. Paul O’Dette has served as Director of Early Music at the Eastman School of Music since 1976 and is Artistic Director of the Boston Early Music Festival.

Stephen Stubbs, BEMF Artistic Director, archlute, theorbo, Baroque guitar, was born in 1951 in Seattle, and has been engaged in music-making since early childhood. Parallel interests in new and pre-Romantic music led him to take a degree in composition at University and to study the lute and harpsichord. Further years of study in Holland and England preceded his professional début as a lutenist at the Wigmore Hall, London in 1976. He has lived in North Germany since 1980, where he is the professor for lute and performance practices at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen.

With his direction of Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival, he began his career as an opera director and simultaneously founded the ensemble Tragicomedia which has since recorded over 20 CDs and completed tours of Europe, North America, and Japan. He has been invited to direct opera productions in several European countries, the U.S., Canada, and Scandinavia, including Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam, 1997-8; Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo for the Boston Early Music Festival, Tanglewood, and Drottningholm Court Theatre, 1997; Francesco Cavalli’s Ercole Amante for Boston, Tanglewood, and Utrecht, 1999; Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and Vespers in Vancouver, 2000; Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Bilbao and Lully’s Thésée in Boston, 2001.

To expand his repertoire into the High Baroque period, Stephen Stubbs created the Baroque orchestra Teatro Lirico, which made its recording début in 1996 with the CD Love and Death in Venice. Further recordings by the ensemble include Italian ’Cello Concerti with soloist Lucie Swarts and Vivaldi Motets with soprano Suzie LeBlanc. The largest project to date has been the recreation of Antonio Sartorio’s Orfeo of 1672 for concert performances in the Dresden and Utrecht Festivals and a staged version for the Musikfest Bremen in September of 1998. A live recording of this work for Vanguard Classics was awarded the Cini Prize for best opera recording of 1999.

Stubbs’ solo lute recordings include the music of J. S. Bach, S. L. Weiss, David Kellner and the Belgian lutenist Jaques St. Luc. In 1998 he recorded The Golden Age of the French Lute including the music of Gaultier, Gallot, and Logi. With a recording of Bach’s Luteworks he has begun his work as a soloist with the ATMA label where he also appears as a director of the Monteverdi Vespers with Tragicomedia and Handel Love Duets with Ensemble Arion. Together with Milos Valent, concertmaster of Teatro Lirico, he has developed a duo to explore the little known repertoire for violin and lute or guitar. With baroque harpist Maxine Eilander he has recorded Sonate al Pizzico, to be released on ATMA later this year.

To cultivate the singers and players of the next generation he has founded an early opera course at the Hochschule in Bremen. 2003 will see the sixth annual meeting of this intensive week-long workshop called the “Accademia d’Amore”.

Gilbert Blin was born in 1960 in France. He studied Theatre History and Stage Direction at the Sorbonne in Paris. Upon graduating in 1986, Gilbert Blin concentrated on Rameau’s operas and their relation to the stage, an interest that has since broadened to encompass French opera and its relationship to Baroque theatre, his fields of expertise as historian and stage director.

During his training, Gilbert Blin collaborated with some of the world’s greatest directors: Robert Altman, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Vittorio Rossi, Helmut Polixa, and Nicolas Joël, among others. These engagements, as actor or stage assistant, have taken him from Paris to Stockholm, Lausanne, Copenhagen, Montréal, and Sydney. In 1987, Gilbert Blin was assistant stage director at the Opéra de Paris, and under the artistic directions of Jean-Louis Martinoty and Thierry Fouquet, he worked at Opéra-Comique in Paris. From 1987, with Don Giovanni, to 1991, with Idomeneo, Gilbert Blin explored various pieces under the visions of artists like Göran Järvefelt, Volker Schlöndorff, and Sir Charles Mackerras. He also had a chance to work with sculptors and painters like Arman, Bernar Venet, and Jennifer Bartlett on experimental sets and costumes.

For many years, Gilbert Blin has taught theatre and culture history in many prestigious national French schools. At the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he has also been in charge of the Campus Theatre from 1981 to 1991, where he directed plays of Shakespeare, Corneille, Molière, and Marivaux, as well as operas such as Purcell’s Dido and Eaneas and Charpentier’s Actéon and Pastorale de Noël.

In 1991, Gilbert Blin directed Massenet’s Werther for the Opéra de Nancy, which was invited to Saint-Etienne, native city of the composer, for the centennial of the piece in 1993. For Opéra-Comique in Paris, Gilbert Blin presented a new version of the show in 1994 with Laurent Petitgirard conducting, and in 1995 directed Delibes’ Lakmé for the same house, a famous production frequently revived in France until 2000. For Opera de Massy he conducted a workshop on Louise of Charpentier. In 1996, he was dramaturge for Carmen of Bizet, directed by David Radok, at the Royal Opera of Copenhagen. In 1999, Gilbert Blin was the first French stage director invited by the Prague State Opera: his successful production of Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable conducted by Vincent Monteil has been performed for 3 seasons.

In eighteenth-century repertoire, Gluck appears in various ways in the work of Gilbert Blin: French adviser for Arnold Östman’s productions of Iphigénie en Tauride (Drottningholm, 1990) and Alceste (Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, 1993); he also directed a workshop for young singers on Iphigénie en Tauride for the Opéra de Massy in 1995. As stage director for the Drottningholm Theatre, Gilbert Blin presented Orfeo and Euridice in 1992. This production, conducted by Arnold Östman, was the first modern release of the 1769 “Parma Version” and was filmed and recorded. It was revived in 1998, as part of the Gluck Festival presented for Stockholm European Culture Capital.

Since its foundation in 1999, Gilbert Blin is director of the Académie Desprez, Association Française pour le Rayonnement du Théâtre du Château de Drottningholm et du Musée Suédois du Théâtre. This historical building of the eighteenth century allows Gilbert Blin, in partnership with musicologist Rémy-Michel Trotier, to lead research on opera and develop a whole practice, through publishing, education, and stage productions on an international scale. The Académie Desprez’s original achievement was supported by the Drottningholmsteaterns Vänner foundation when Gilbert Blin received in 2002, the Henrik Nordmark stipendium from HRH the Princess Victoria of Sweden.

Realizations include a new production, designed and directed, in 2001, of Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso for the State Opera of Prague and, in 2003, a staged reconstruction of Vivaldi’s Rosmira fedele for the Opéra de Nice. In the same house, Gilbert Blin signed the staging, sets, costumes, and lights of his acclaimed production of Teseo of Handel in 2007. Recently, for the Ensemble Baroque de Nice, he directed a staged version of La Giuditta, oratorio of Alessandro Scarlatti, conducted by Gilbert Bezzina.

Since 2006, Gilbert Blin has been working on a project of reconstructing the original sets and costumes of Mozart operas. With Czech stage director Lubor Cukr, he recently presented Don Giovanni at the Prague Estates Theatre in 2006 and 2007 and Le Nozze di Figaro at Opéra de Nice in 2008.

Gilbert Blin made his American début with the Boston Early Music Festival in 2001 by directing a fully-staged production of Lully’s Thésée. With musicians Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, Gilbert Blin directed, in 2007, Lully’s Psyché at the Cutler Majestic Theatre in Boston and at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington. In 2008, Gilbert Blin was appointed “Stage Director in Residence” of the Boston Early Music Festival.