This French countertenor's gleaming voice has encouraged a celebration of early music operas by Monteverdi, as well as classics by Baroque titans like Vivaldi and Handel. Skilled at pure-tone singing with melismatic touches, he brings a wide variety of emotions to arias, fluttering with delicacy in one line and piercing in the next. He's also open to interpretive risk-taking, as his participation in Christina Pluhar's jazzed-up arrangement of Purcell's “Music for a While” swingingly demonstrates.