Marc Minkowski is a French conductor of mostly Baroque works and French Neoclassical music, born in Paris in 1962. His father was Alexandre Minkowski. Marc Minkowski is a Chevalier du Mérite. He began his musical career as a bassoonist for either René Clemencic's Clemencic Consort or Philippe Pierlot's Ricercar Consort. In 1982 Minkowski formed "Les Musiciens du Louvre", an orchestra dedicated to showcasing French Baroque music which has championed works by Marin Marais (opera Alcione), Jean-Joseph Mouret (opera Les amours de Ragonde), Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Jean-Baptiste Lully (opera Phaëton at Opéra National de Lyon) and Jean-Philippe Rameau (opera Hippolyte et Aricie). The ensemble has also revived lesser-known Handel operas, such as Teseo, Amadigi, Riccardo Primo and Ariodante, as well as several operas by Christoph Willibald Gluck including Armide (at the Centre de Musique Baroque de Versailles), Alceste and Iphigénie en Tauride (at the English Bach Festival at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden). Les Musiciens du Louvre relocated to Grenoble after 1996, where they are associates at the Maison de la Culture de Grenoble. Minkowski's career focus has shifted from an initial specialized interest in the Baroque to a wider interest in opera. He conducted Mozart's Idomeneo in 1996 at the Opéra National de Paris and debuted his Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Salzburg Festival. He has since conducted Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and Mitridate, re di Ponto at the Salzburg Festival, Handel's Giulio Cesare in Amsterdam, Paris and Zürich (with Cecilia Bartoli) and his Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno in Zürich, Donizetti's La Favorite in Zürich, and Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride, among others. He has also performed and recorded critically acclaimed works by Jacques Offenbach: Orphée aux Enfers, La belle Hélène and La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein. As well as Les Musiciens du Louvre, Minkowski is active in the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Mozarteum Salzburg and the Staatskapelle Dresden. He will conduct Rameau's Platée as part of the summer 2007 festival season of the Santa Fe Opera in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The majority of his recordings have been issued by Deutsche Grammophon, but can also be found on Erato and EMI's Virgin Classics. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.