Shocking news has arrived of the death of Pierre Audi, director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival and one of the most influential creators of new works of opera. Pierre, who died in Beijing without warning during the night, was 67.
Born in Lebanon, he went to school in France and England. In 1979 he founded the Almeida Theatre in north London. From 1988 to 2018, he was artistic director of Dutch National Opera, putting a marginal company on the world map. From there, he went on to Aix.
He commissioned new works by Jonathan Harvey, Hans Werner Henze, Tan Dun, Kaija Saariaho, Alexander Knaifel, Pascal Dusapin, Louis Andriessen, György Kurtág and Wolfgang Rihm, often directing them himself. He staged Rossini at the Met, Stockhausen in Amsterdam. He was indefatigable, and irreplaceable.
Pierre, who was a good friend, was polyglot, polymath,, polycultural. There was almost no subject he could not discuss. He treated culture as the highest of human aspirations and worried constantly about its degradation by media and politicians. A call from Pierre was never a waste of time. I will miss our conversations terribly. His wife and children are in my thoughts.
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