The career of Georges Pretre – who would have turned 100 this week – was unconventional, to say the least.
He won his greatest respect and affection in Vienna, where he conducted the symphony orchestra and impressed with an unfailing elegance and insouciance. In France, he was music director of the two Paris opera houses in the 1970s but he was passed over for modernist and foreign candidates when it came to building the Bastille.
Elsewhere, although he conducted numerous times at Covent Garden and the Met, he is remembered, if at all, for his recordings with Maria Callas who trusted him as she trusted few men with sticks.
Pretre’s other achievement was his involvement with Francis Poulenc, whose music he upheld for two generations when it was going badly out of fashion.
Gorgeous Georges Pretre died aged 92 in January 2017.
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