Armide represents the culmination of the long and fruitful career of Jean-Baptiste Lully, the most powerful musician at the court of Louis XIV and the first important composer of French opera.

Though not his final composition, Armide was Lully’s last complete tragédie en musique and the last work he wrote in collaboration with librettist Philippe Quinault. It was an instant and enduring success: a crowd-pleaser at its initial production and a perennial favourite of audiences and critics in the eighteenth century.

The Opera Lafayette Opera and Chorus is a Washington ensemble devoted to music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

“Brown led his small, supple orchestra and sweetly blended chorus with authority, dramatic intensity and welling musicanship….the outstanding performance of the afternoon was that of mezzo-soprano Stephanie Houtzeel in the role of Armide. It would be a cliché to say she was "larger than life" and, in fact, she seemed something even more elemental. At its best, her Armide seemed life itself, with its messy joys, sorrows, hungers and contradictions, and the role was sung with all the ardor, intelligence and vocal luster at Houtzeel's command, which was plenty. This was the sort of daring, impassioned performance that can make a career.” The Washington Post’s review of the concert performance