Le Jardin des Voix (“garden of voices”) is a biennial international competition intent on finding, training, and showcasing the best voices for Baroque music emerging from the world’s conservatories. You could call it a classical music “American Idol.” How this ideal manifests itself in performance became clear Wednesday night, when the seven prizewinners sang Luigi Rossi’s “Spargeti sospiri” (“Shed Your Sighs”).

Their conductor, William Christie, instigator and prime mover of Le Jardin des Voix as well as founder of Les Arts Florissants, stood behind them, barely visible, immobile. Placing a hand on a shoulder of a singer at each side, Mr. Christie seemed to conduct through a current of feeling that ran through the singers. It worked. They never came close to losing time, or balance; like the rest of the singing that night, the Rossi was glorious. The moment exemplified how the essence of great music-making, the most precious yet intangible nuances of sentiment, technique, skill, and strength, can be transferred from one generation to another with barely a visible motion.

The talent pool for this type of singing is probably deeper than that for any other kind of vocal music. These fledgling Baroque specialists were picked from 210 aspirants. The music of this program spanned three languages and most of Europe’s nations. Its composers ranged in time from the Italian Domenico Mazzochi (born in 1592) to the Austrian Mozart (born in 1756), with familiar names (Purcell, Handel) and unfamiliar ones (Francois-Andre Danican Philidor, Andre-Modeste Grety) side by side. Mr. Christie has mastered every aspect of each phase of Baroque style.

The Charpentier prelude to “Plainte de la Bergere” from “Venus et Adonis” swells with a grandeur that would swamp the more astringent Lambert airs. The Handel, in its sheer ferocity of volume and velocity, shakes the house after so much delicate French music-making. And the Mozart synthesizes two cen turies of traditions and innovations into an intoxicating sweep of romance and virtuosity.

Like their conductor, Les Arts Florissants know their way around all this music, too: Their playing throughout was exceptional. The debutantes were well rehearsed (Kenneth Weiss worked with Mr. Christie in preparing the singers) and shown off with loving care (incisive staging by Vincent Boussard and pretty if peculiar costumes by Anne-Laure Feriot).These are singers we will surely be hearing again and again.

Claire Debono, a Maltan soprano, looks like a European cousin to Sarah Jessica Parker (small stature, big eyes, and thoroughly charming). Singing Purcell, she had a masterly control of her vocal line, the words, and the stage space. The Algerian soprano Amel Brahim-Djelloul nearly stopped the show with her dazzling coloratura and heartfelt acting in the aria from Mozart’s “Ascanio in Alba.”

Judith van Wanroij is a Dutch soprano with a Junoesque face and manner and a big, gleaming soprano. When her emotional expression catches up to that voice’s possibilities, she will be terrific. Andrew Tortise is tall (rare for British tenors) and sings with equal measures of musical intelligence and emotional commitment (very rare for any singer). He brought off the comic travesty duet from Purcell’s “Indian Queen” quite hilariously.

His partner was countertenor Xavier Sabata, who seemed to offer a sweet, meek voice; then, in the second act, this Barcelonan sang an aria from Handel’s “Radamisto” with such power and splendor he won a huge ovation – and put almost every other world-class countertenor on notice. Two lower-voiced Germans, Andre Morsch and Konstantin Wolff, rounded out the ensemble. Morsch spun gossamer pianissimi in an air de cour by Lambert and led the fiery “Radamisto” quartet. In Purcell, Campra, and everything else, Mr. Wolff was delightful.

The evening was a moving reminder that music is not only “the best means we have of spending time,” as Stravinsky said, but also a time we must invest in.