Christian Curnyn

Conductor Christian Curnyn has been best-known as the director of the Early Opera Company, which he founded and which, true to its name, specializes in Baroque and early Classical operatic repertory. He has also been noted as a daring stage director who introduced sexual and other unconventional themes into operatic productions. Handel is heavily represented in his substantial recording catalog, which includes several rarely heard works. Among that group is a 2025 recording of Jephtha by Maurice Greene, the earliest native-born English composer of oratorios. Curnyn is a native of Glasgow, born in April of 1971. His interest in avant-garde theater preceded his forays into early music, occurring for the first time when he visited Scotland's Edinburgh Festival as a teen and saw productions directed by experimental choreographer Pina Bausch and others. Curnyn attended the University of York, majoring in music, and his specialization in early music began with graduate studies in harpsichord at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Finding few British organizations that devoted themselves to early dramatic music, Curnyn founded the Early Opera Company in 1994. By 2005, the company had attracted recording company attention, making its debut on the Chandos label with a performance of Handel's Partenope, HWV 27. In addition to theatrical operatic productions, Curnyn and the group have frequently appeared at the likes of Wigmore Hall, the BBC Proms, and St. John's Smith Square in London and has performed at the London Festival of Baroque Music, the Cheltenham Festival, and the Spitalfields Festival, among others. Its productions drew interest from other British opera companies, including Opera North, the Scottish Opera, the Grange Park Opera, and especially the English National Opera, which shares Curnyn's experimentalist bent. He has most often devised and led new productions of Handel's operas but has also ranged widely across the music of the 17th and 18th centuries and some productions by other experimental directors, including After Dido, the contemporary realization of Purcell's opera by director Katie Mitchell. Curnyn has also conducted orchestral music with both early music ensembles (the Academy of Ancient Music, The English Concert, and the Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra, among others) and modern symphony orchestras, including the Philharmonie Essen, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (with which he recorded an album of violin-and-orchestra music with violinist Nicola Benedetti), several leading orchestras in Australia, and the Ulster and Hallé Orchestras. Much of his recorded work has been done with the Early Opera Company and has featured many of Handel's operas. Among the examples of Curnyn's unconventional approach was a 2012 production of Rameau's Platée in Stuttgart, Germany, featuring Curnyn himself on stage, having sex acts performed on him as the curtain rose, while an assistant conducted the orchestra. He led the Early Opera Company in a recording of Handel's Acis and Galatea released on Chandos in 2018, returning in 2022 on Chandos' Chaconne offshoot with a recording of Handel's rarely heard early opera Amadigi di Gaula, HWV 11. In 2025, he presented another rarity, leading the Early Opera Company in Maurice Greene's oratorio Jephtha. ~ James Manheim, Rovi