Le Poeme Harmonique
Since 1998, the Poème Harmonique has brought together, around its founder Vincent Dumestre, passionate musicians devoted to the interpretation of 17th and 18th century music. The ensemble’s inventive and demanding programmes are a testament to its enlightened approach to baroque repertoires and to its in-depth work on vocal and instrumental textures.

His field of action? Well-known and little-known works from the daily life and ceremonies of Versailles (Lalande, Lully, Couperin, Clérambault, Charpentier…), Baroque Italy from Monteverdi and Pergolesi, or the England of Purcell. Inventive and demanding programmes that forge new links between the secular and the sacred, learned music and popular sources, but that also combine music with theatre, dance and the circus. In opera, the ensemble is recognised as a world benchmark for its interpretations of works by Lully, Cavalli and Monteverdi, and its collaboration with director Benjamin Lazar has produced shows that have been unanimously acclaimed by critics and audiences alike.

Le Poème Harmonique never ceases to surprise audiences by revealing forgotten treasures (in autumn 2024 L’Homme-Femme, an irresistible comedy of the genre by Galuppi, directed by Agnès Jaoui – Opéra de Dijon, Théâtre de Caen and Opéra royal de Versailles ), by offering a new approach to the greatest masterpieces (Il Nerone or L’Incoronazione di Poppea with the Académie de l’Opéra National de Paris), or by integrating processions and striking spatial effects into the concerts.

With some sixty performances given each year, Le Poème Harmonique is a familiar name at the world’s greatest festivals and concert halls – Opéra-Comique, Opéra Royal of Versailles, Philharmonie de Paris, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Festivals of Ambronay, Beaune and Sablé, Teatro Real (Madrid), Wigmore Hall (London), NCPA (Beijing), Philharmonie of Berlin, Wiener Konzerthaus, Concertgebouw (Bruges), BOZAR (Brussels), Oji Hall (Tokyo), Columbia University (New York), Teatro San Carlo (Naples), Accademia Santa Cecilia (Rome), Philharmonie de Saint-Pierre (Paris), and the BBC Proms…. Le Poème Harmonique remains deeply committed to Normandy, its home region, the cradle of its many creations and the ideal setting for its educational and social initiatives and its work to integrate young professional musicians.

The ensemble’s discography now boasts some fifty works that have won regular critical acclaim, as well as numerous public successes. Mon Amant de Saint-Jean, a singing tour from the Baroque to the Roaring Twenties with Stéphanie d’Oustrac, has just been released by Alpha Classics. After the world premiere of Cavalli’s L’Egisto, already awarded a Choc by Classica and the prestigious Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik, Château de Versailles Spectacles is publishing Lully’s Armide in spring 2024. In 2024, the ensemble records two masterpieces of choral music: Purcell’s Hail! Bright Cecila by Purcell and La Selva Morale e Spirituale by Monteverdi.

Following the remarkable success of the 2017 edition, for which he was responsible for programming, Vincent Dumestre has been invited by the city of Krakow to take over artistic direction of the Misteria Paschalia festival in 2024, a world reference for Baroque music during the Easter season.

Vincent Dumestre
His strong taste for the arts, his creative sense of Baroque aesthetics, his explorer’s flame and his taste for collective adventure naturally led him to explore the repertoires of the 17th and 18th centuries and to create a tailor-made ensemble. With his Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre is now one of the most inventive and versatile architects of the Baroque revival, directing orchestras, choirs, musical seasons, competitions and festivals, without abandoning the practice of his first instruments, the plucked strings.

Literally a child of May 1968, Vincent Dumestre made his first steps in concert with others, recording with pioneers then working to discover, understand and revive this music from another age. A graduate of the École du Louvre, where he studied art history, and after attending the École normale de musique de Paris as a student of the classical guitar, he learned to play the lute, the Baroque guitar and the theorbo with Hopkinson Smith, Eugène Ferré and Rolf Lislevand. He joined the Ricercar Consort, La Grande Écurie & La Chambre du Roy, Hespèrion XX and La Simphonie du Marais before creating Le Poème Harmonique in 1998.

From exhumations to reconstructions, from well-known composers to unexpected programmes, he never ceases to offer genuine creations that open up the horizons of a whole range of vocal and instrumental music. While he and Le Poème Harmonique are in demand at all the major international venues for baroque music, Vincent Dumestre is also developing part of his activity in Normandy, his ensemble’s home region (programming of the Saisons Baroques at the Chapelle Corneille, direction of the Corneille Competition, International Baroque Singing Competition, l’École Harmonique, school children’s orchestra in partnership with the Démos project of the Philharmonie de Paris).

Some forty recordings, both CDs and DVDs, released on the Alpha Classics label, where he was an artist from the outset, and on the Château de Versailles Spectacles label, bear witness to his fruitful collaboration with Le Poème Harmonique in the fields of both learned and popular music.

Vincent Dumestre is artistic director of the Saisons baroques du Jura. In 2024, Vincent Dumestre was invited by the city of Krakow to take on the artistic direction of Misteria Paschalia.

Vincent Dumestre is an Officer of the French National Order of Arts and Letters and of the French National Order of Merit.