Ensemble Updates Its `Me' Recording

UNTIL Les Arts Florissants undertook the project 10 years ago, Marc-Antoine Charpentier's ``Me'' remained unrecorded - indeed virtually unperformed.

United States conductor William Christie and his ensemble were not entirely satisfied with their earlier recording of the work, however, because it did not include certain music discovered later, and more important, did not include all that the ensemble has learned about performance in the past decade. Christie set out to rectify that situation.

On May 16, while the ensemble was in New York, it was announced that the group had signed a new exclusive contract with Erato Records, ending a long and fruitful association with Harmonia Mundi.

And the first recording under the new contract? Another account of Charpentier's ``Me,'' a pleasant surprise and an odd twist of fate for Charpentier's score, which has now been recorded twice by the same ensemble.

The new recording will feature the music missing from the former.

Future recording under the new record contract will include Purcell's ``Dido and Aeneas,'' an album of motets by Charpentier, Mondonville, and Rameau, and more opera from Charpentier, among others.