Just in: Sudden death of the director Top Opera

Shocking messages have the death of Pierre Audi, the director of the Aix-en-Provence festival and one of the most influential creators in the new opera works. Pierre, who died in Beijing during the night without warning, was 67.

He was born in Lebanon and went to school in France and England. In 1979 he founded the Almeida Theater in North London. From 1988 to 2018 he was an artistic director of the Dutch National Opera and put a marginal company on the world map. From there he went 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. He often directed Rossini in Met, Stockhausen in Amsterdam. He was tireless and irreplaceable.

Pierre, who was a good friend, was polyglot, polymath, polycultural. There was almost no topic that he could not discuss. He treated culture as the highest human efforts and was constantly worried about the deterioration of 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.