Pierre Audi

“Pierre Audi was undoubtedly one of the opera world’s most prominent figures and a rare cultural icon in today’s world. His approach to opera has inspired a whole generation of stage directors and artistic managers. He is therefore rightly hailed as a visionary, who fundamentally renewed the language of opera. Pierre was born in the Lebanese capital Beirut in 1957. His family moved to Europe and in 1979 he founded the Almeida Theatre in London, where he directed several theatre and opera productions, before joining The Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, which he led in exceptional fashion for 30 years. I consider it a great privilege to have spent 16 years of that glorious period by his side.

Pierre was like an artistic brother to me, a partner in crime, but also an endless source of inspiration. He, along with business director Truze Lodder, allowed me to grow and trustingly offered me every opportunity to learn the ropes. From our very first contact, we felt a connection and that never changed; indeed, we had planned to talk at length this weekend. Such conversations with Pierre were always enlightening, inspiring, supportive and critical. The latter not least when discussing the geopolitical situation and the growing global extremism, but also the incomprehensible decisions in the opera world’s carousel of appointments, or the traditionalism of some houses that threaten to project a museum-like, musty and ultimately redundant image onto the opera genre. Pierre invariably resisted these reactionary tendencies, not by leaping onto the barricades, but by propagating a hybrid and cross-cultural approach to his own opera-making.

At La Monnaie, Pierre realised a dream he did not dare to pursue in Amsterdam: a production of Pelléas et Mélisande for which I put him in touch with Anish Kapoor. It was the first in a long series of projects, from the double evening with Gluck's two Iphigénies through Handel’s Orlando and the revivals of his historic Alcina and Tamerlano productions from Drottningholm, to the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s Penthesilea and, finally, the completion of our Ring cycle. As it turned out, Götterdämmerung was his last new production. The symbolism is unmissable. The end of the gods. The end of a generation.

Yesterday evening, we dedicated the last performance of I Grotteschi to Pierre. It was, after all, with Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria that our artistic relationship began. He was the one who introduced me to Monteverdi. Ulisse was also the last production he directed at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, which he had led as artistic director since 2019. Along with Leonardo García-Alarcón, who also conducted that production, the musicians of Cappella Mediterranea and the soloists, we all felt it was important to dedicate this Monteverdi performance to him. The performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony under the baton of Alain Altinoglu, his musical partner for the last two parts of The Ring at La Monnaie, is also dedicated to his memory.

Our thoughts are with colleagues in Aix but first and foremost with his wife Marieke and their children Sophia and Alexander. He had just resolved to travel and work less and spend more time with them. Fate has cruelly prevented him doing so.

Pierre's death feels like the closing of a cycle. Far too soon.

– Peter de Caluwe