There can be few personal discographies of 17th- and 18th‑century music as distinguished as William Christie’s. Almost from the moment he and his vocal and instrumental ensemble Les Arts Florissants appeared in the early 1980s they were seen as exemplary, imaginative and exciting performers of Baroque vocal music. More specifically, listeners quickly recognised Christie’s unfailing attention to the meaning of text and inflections of speech and his natural instinct for dramatic pacing, emotional expression and tonal beauty, be it in an incident-packed opera or a solemn motet. There is never a lazy moment in a Christie performance, and it has made him one of the most celebrated and influential of all ‘early music’ conductors.

Recording at first for Harmonia Mundi, Les Arts Florissants revived numerous undeservedly forgotten works by the likes of Charpentier, Lully, Delalande, Bouzignac, Moulinié, Luigi Rossi, Montéclair and Campra, as well as recording more familiar music by Monteverdi, Purcell, Rameau and Handel. In 1994 they switched to Erato, and it is the fruits of this second partnership, which lasted until 2011, that are gathered in their entirety in this 61‑CD box, a celebration of Christie’s 80th birthday last December. Who could doubt that this is an enticing prospect?

The earliest Erato releases continued along the same lines as before. A crisp-cut and vivid account of Rameau’s delicious grands motets won a Gramophone Award. So too Purcell’s King Arthur, whisked to the shelves following admired stagings in Paris and London only weeks earlier, its choruses and dances full of life and colour, the famous Frost Scene expertly managed as gladdening warmth overcomes the impressive Cold Genius of bass Petteri Salomaa, and ‘Fairest Isle’ given moving dignity by Véronique Gens. There were even two re-recordings. Dido and Aeneas, with Gens as a noble Dido, had the dramatic timing and focus (and improved English) to supersede its 1985 predecessor. And, remarkably, there came a second go at Charpentier’s operatic masterpiece Médée, premiered on record by LAF only 10 years earlier but now returning with the benefits of greater experience, the consolidating effect of a full staging, and Lorraine Hunt in the cast as Medea. To hear the flow of intense and precisely expressed emotion in her stunning Act 3 monologues, or the bitter final confrontation with Mark Padmore’s Jason rising to barely controlled shouting, is to wonder if there can be any moments in Baroque opera more viscerally powerful.

It is no exaggeration to say that the re‑establishment of Charpentier as one of the great Baroque masters might never have happened without Christie’s efforts and insight. Further Charpentier recordings here include the superb two-act opera La descente d’Orphée aux enfers, with Paul Agnew appealing to the underworld with mounting plaintive ardency to the richly lugubrious sympathisings of two bass viols, and Agnew is strong again in Les stances du Cid, the serious part of a disc of mixed short dramatic pieces that also includes the light-hearted Les plaisirs de Versailles. The popular Te Deum and Messe de minuit are mopped up to good effect in further discs, as are further rarities both sacred and secular, solemn and silly.

Staying with French repertoire, to Rameau’s were added further examples of that luxuriously theatrical church genre, the grand motet, from the confident Campra, melancholy Desmarest and, at a peak of stagy indulgence, worldly Mondonville. Christie misses no tricks, and his singers in these imposing choral sculptures are keen, present, flexible and sinewy. A disc of adroitly chosen and illuminating scenes from Lully’s operas and the kind of assorted divertissements and ballets that fed into them makes up a little for the absence of a complete tragédie lyrique by the composer. And Couperin’s divine Leçons de Ténèbres are given somewhat sensual treatment by sopranos Sophie Daneman and Patricia Petibon.

Rameau fared well on Erato, and in significant works too. His debut opera, Hippolyte et Aricie, brought a what-we’ve-been-waiting-for moment in 1997 with a strong cast led by Padmore, Hunt, Anna Maria Panzarella and Laurent Naouri, and won itself a Gramophone Award; also a winner was the more carefree Les fêtes d’Hébé, a crowd-pleasing musical party stocked with engaging airs and dances; Zoroastre, with Padmore and Panzarella again to the fore, was another nailed-on top choice; and Zéphyre and La guirlande appear to be the only recordings of these lively one-act ballets. Space precludes more detailed discussion of these tasty offerings, but it suffices to say that in music such as this Christie scarcely puts a foot wrong, and that these are performances that will be hard to surpass.

The singers’ names we have dropped already have hinted at the breadth and quality of Christie’s vocalists over the years. With the Erato recordings we are past the first, mainly French generation of fine baroque singers that performed in solo and ensembles in the Harmonia Mundi days, and are moving towards some of the casts that would appear in the large-scale opera and oratorio recordings of the late 1990s onwards. Of three Handel operas, Orlando is a solid first choice for the piece, presented with faultless dramatic pacing and excellent singing from Patricia Bardon, Rosemary Joshua, Rosa Mannion, Hilary Summers and Harry van der Kamp. Alcina, recorded in the unfriendly acoustic of a live staging in Paris, loses some of its integrity by the importation (perhaps by opera house demand) of the likes of Renée Fleming, Susan Graham and Natalie Dessay; compelling as they can certainly be in their own way, their vocal styles sit a little less comfortably within the collegial LAF ethic. Anne-Sofie von Otter sits better, however, in a warmly conceived Serse. Listeners familiar with the remarkable 1996 Peter Sellars Glyndebourne staging of Handel’s oratorio Theodora may be disappointed to find that Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (as she had by then become) does not sing Irene in the studio version recorded four years later, but this is still a strong performance by a decent cast. Yet another Gramophone Award-winner was Acis and Galatea with Agnew and Daneman in the title-roles, performed with the bright dramatic charm and purpose to bring out the piece’s pastoral and tragic dualism.

With Erato Christie also moved on chronologically into the Classical period. His first Mozart came in the form of a compellingly theatrical Requiem – listen to the heart-rending ‘salve me’ in the ‘Rex tremendae’. The Mass in C minor followed, mobile and (of course) dramatic, though some may find the statuesque grandeur of other readings more fitting. The two great Viennese Singspiels, however, are given fresh ideas and a light and witty hand. Die Entführung aus dem Serail, with Christine Schäfer, Ian Bostridge and Petibon shining among the strong cast, really hits the spot in its easy counterbalancing of the serious and the frivolous. Die Zauberflöte with Dessay, Mannion and Hans Peter Blochwitz aboard is handsome, yet on this occasion just seems to lack something of Christie’s usual grasp of forward movement. Christie’s other Classical adventures include a tremendous Haydn Creation blazing with orchestral light and choral exuberance, and Méhul’s 1792 opera comique one-acter Stratonice (this with the Cappella and Corona Coloniensis rather than LAF), a curiosity rather than a compelling revival, perhaps, but enough to make one wonder what Christie might have done for French Classical-period opera had he chosen.

Christie did not forget the earlier Baroque, however. His Monteverdi Vespers is musicologically conventional but one of the most purely beautiful and generously expressive to listen to. A 1997 disc of Sigismondo d’India madrigals is skilfully done, if not quite to the concentrated levels of later specialist madrigal groups (or indeed of LAF’s own more recent Monteverdi and Gesualdo madrigal recordings under Agnew), and Landi’s 1631 opera Il Sant’Alessio sounds wonderfully vivacious, in places even bawdy. Other small-scale recordings include duets by mid- to late-Baroque Italians of the likes of Marcello, Scarlatti and Porpora, exuberantly brought off the page by Philippe Jaroussky and Max Emanuel Cen∂ic´, and a disc of devotional songs by Purcell, Blow and Humfrey sung with style and feeling by Agnew and a group of younger singers. Of these, Claire Debono and Konstantin Wolff had been among the early beneficiaries of Le Jardin des Voix, the ‘Baroque Academy’ Christie set up in 2002 to develop the kind of ‘young shoots’ that he has been unofficially bringing on ever since Les Arts Florissants started, and it is good find in the box a disc (presumably not commercially released before) of assorted short items from Mazzocchi to Purcell to Philidor performed with great aplomb by members of the 2005 cohort. Pity they don’t have anything from the other years.

Most admirers of Les Arts Florissants will of course have a fair few of these recordings already, but retailing at around £165 this is nevertheless a mouth-watering way to scoop up a good deal more. Be warned, though: no relevant texts or notes are included, which will surely hamper appreciation of much of this music unless you can find more information elsewhere. Mind you, such is the unfailing communicative power of Christie’s music-making that at times you almost feel as if you don’t need it.