La Bouchardière was a chorister at Magdalen College, Oxford, studied at the University of Birmingham and was a staff director at English National Opera.
[2] He is best known for The Full Monteverdi, his acclaimed reworking of Monteverdi's Fourth book of Madrigals with I Fagiolini, winning a Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2006; it toured widely as a live production, including a run of performances at Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, New York City.
[6] He returned to Lincoln Center for Performing Arts, New York in July 2013 to direct a controversial reimagining of Lera Auerbach's a cappella opera The Blind (based on the symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck), for which the audience was blindfolded throughout.
[7] In 2014, he directed a new production of John Adams' El Niño for Spoleto Festival USA, which was widely praised for taking a very different approach from that of its original director, Peter Sellars.
[10] Continuing his interest in dramatising religious material, La Bouchardière has recently collaborated with the British ensemble Solomon's Knot on Bach's St Matthew Passion in venues across the UK and Europe, including Leipzig, Weimar, Snape Maltings and Wigmore Hall.