67 years old, Pierre Audi died brutally on the morning of May 3 in Beijing where he worked on the resumption of his staging of “ Siegfried »One you« Twilight of the gods ». He was, among others, the director general of the Aix-en-Provence Lyric Art Festival since 2019, the year he had been chosen to succeed Bernard Foccroule. His disappearance is cruelly felt by the teams of an Aix festival for which he fed ever more important ambitions.
« When everything seems unstable and transientwrote Pierre Audi in conclusion of his editorial presenting the 2025 edition of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Art remains, like a reliable compass. “Before completing his remarks with a vere confidence at the end of the opera” Billy Bud » : « I was lost on the infinite sea, but I saw a sail in the storm, the sail that shines all over, and I am satisfied. Pierre Audi joined the luminous sail by leaving us the reliable compass, that of the art he liked and that he had programmed for this year and the following. A native of Lebanon, where he had emerged on November 9, 1957, he was a brilliant director solicited all over the world and an inventive and demanding theater director.
Chosen in 2018 to succeed Bernard Foccroule to the management of the Aix-en-Provence Lyric Art Festival, Pierre Audi had taken office the following year not without having said loud and clear that the music was multiple and that he intended to make her live in Provence in all his facets. It had to be crossed as soon as it takes up, the errors linked to the pandemic. Then following this period, he had to manage the consequences of the C COVID, but also of a situation strongly impacted by geopolitical conflicts. What has managed to do by remaining faithful to his strategic choices, supported by the festival institutions and partners.
In recent years, Pierre Audi had reached the festival ” Shows himself more than ever with his territory. “And he wrote at the start of the year:” On this territory, the festival deploys a whole series of excellence proposals and partnerships: Luma Foundation, the Orange choregia, theaters, the Toulon opera, the Grand Avignon Opera, etc. Our institution continues to perpetuate, while reinventing them, its fundamental principles: an artistic programming of excellence, a local anchoring at the same time as an international influence, an opening policy to the greatest number and an ever more advanced consideration of its social and environmental responsibility. “While arriving at bringing four centuries of music to life, Pierre Audi reinforced this osmosis with a geographically close territory, but also with this Mediterranean basin of which he was a child and of which he was close to concerns. Destimed joins those who estimated him to present his lively condolences to his family and his collaborators.
Michel Egea
The tribute of the Aix-en-Provence festival
The Aix-en-Provence Festival team entrusted its sadness in a statement: “The world of artistic creation loses an immense artist and director of institution, citizen of the world at the crossroads of Mediterranean and Western cultures. As a director, he put himself entirely at the service of the works, in achievements associating sense of the story, purity and incarnation -Parcouring four centuries of opera, but with a particular predilection for the baroque, Wagner and contemporary creation. He was the director of prestigious institutions: Almeida de London Théâtre between 1979 and 1989, Amsterdam National Opera between 1988 and 2018 -a period of thirty years -Holland Festival between 2004 and 2014, Park Avenue Armory de New York since 2015, where he has never ceased to renew the relationship between works, places and audiences, between opera and other artistic disciplines, unique of listening and loyalty with the major prime contractors and composers and composites of today.
This was particularly the case at the Aix-en-Provence festival, which he had taken over in 2019 and which had become extremely dear to his heart, with achievements that marked as the Requiem de Mozart and the Symphony Resurrection de Mahler staged by Romeo Castellucci; The two Gluck Iphigenia and the recreation of the Samson Rameau Opera. We will remember contemporary creations unanimously praised by the public and criticism, and rewarded by the greatest prices, as innocence of Kaija Saariaho, Il Viaggio, Dante by Pascal Dusapin and picture A Day like this by George Benjamin. He believed deeply in the future of lyric art (and musical theater), art more than any other capacity, according to him, to overcome all crises. At the moment of big sorrow, all our most moved and warm thoughts go to his wife and children, family and loved ones. »»
Sophie Joissains’ reaction
In the evening, Sophie Joissains, mayor of Aix-en-Provence, expressed her reaction: “Pierre Audi is no longer. Aix loses one of its greatest creators. Visionary director, builder, he marked his imprint, the Almeida Theater in London, managed with a master of master of Amsterdam Opera for three decades, before taking the reins of our Aix-en-Provence Festival in 2018. He instilled a rare artistic audacity, constant requirement and magnificent elegance. Pierre Audi had this singular genius; Bring the opera to life between tradition and modernity, without ever betraying its mind. Each season, which he conceived, was an act of love for art and for the public. He was both an extremely talented and exceptional sensitivity director of the festival. He had contributed in a formidable way to shine Aix on the international scene, bringing repeated, unique, prestigious and prestigious annual prices to the city was preparing to receive an exceptional distinction in the coming weeks … I had a huge personal affection for him. His absence leaves an immense void, in the lyrical world, and here, in Aix. My thoughts go to his wife Marieke, her children, her relatives and all those whom he loved and inspired. ”
