Dressed in his trademark black, Pierre Audi projects a distant and enigmatic public image. You won’t find him on social media discussing casting or choice of repertoire with the public, but in person, he is engaging and forthcoming about his work. As an opera director his repertoire is astonishing both in quantity and variety; it includes his much-admired Monteverdi cycle and the first complete staging of Wagner’s Ring tetralogy in the Netherlands.
Audi has been Artistic Director at Dutch National Opera for a mind-boggling thirty years, a tenure which put the company on the global opera map and earned it a reputation for innovative productions and new commissions. At the time of our meeting he was rehearsing Stefano Landi’s La morte d’Orfeo, an early opera from 1619. This will be the last production he directs for DNO while he is still Artistic Director: in September he leaves to take up the directorship of the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
Why have you chosen this particular opera, La morte d’Orfeo?
This opera has been on my mind for twenty years. When I directed Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo in 1995 I was very troubled by its ending. There is a scene between Orpheus and his father, the god Apollo, and then a happy conclusion. But the myth continues and is much more cruel. La morte d’Orfeo deals with these events. The bitterness of Orpheus against women after he loses his wife Eurydice, whom he fails to retrieve from Hades, mounts into anger. This personality flaw sets him up against Bacchus, who sends the Maenads to dismember him. While trying to reunite with Eurydice in the underworld, he discovers that she has forgotten him. In the end the Apollonian gods turn him into a star in the firmament. While studying the Orphic myth I also became intrigued by Harrison Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus, but a project incorporating both operas proved too ambitious. At the end of my time here I wanted to work again with the conductor Christophe Rousset, with whom I did L’incoronazione di Poppea in 1994. So this production is an echo of my early days in Amsterdam.
There are close to twenty characters in La morte d’Orfeo…
It's a difficult piece to stage because of the numerous characters and scene changes. You actually have to ignore a large part of it and focus on what is essential in the simple story of Orpheus dying, living, and then dying again. It should be fascinating for those who know Monteverdi. One of the characters is Mercury, for example, who also appears in Poppea, and represents the Apollonian flank. Orpheus’ mother and brother also appear, which is unusual. So Landi gives you the backstory to Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, as well as its sequel.
Our cast is a mixture of established performers and young singers. The casting was complicated, because, basically, it’s a lot of choruses and the voices have to work together in groups. They act as a Greek chorus that expresses the two polar opposites in all of us, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, rationality and instinct. In an ideal world we should behave and follow Apollo, but then we’d become very bland. Our nature is attracted to Bacchus (Dionysus), so we make mistakes. Like Orpheus, we turn around when we’re told not to look back.
The character of Orfeo doesn’t have a lot to sing, but you need somebody with charisma, because the audience needs to understand why these women, who are his ex-girlfriends, want to rip him to shreds. Tenor Juan Francisco Gatell is our Orpheus. It’s a bit like the Me Too movement. Orpheus hates women, has abused them in the past, and now they’re exacting their vengeance. The production doesn’t refer to Me Too, but it's ironic that the murder of Orpheus is so relevant today, when movie stars publicly tear their abusers limb from limb in the newspapers. Of course, the suffering that these women went through is terrible.
There have also been public accusations of sexual abuse and abuse of power in the opera world…
Well, in the arts people work intimately together. How can you stop people being attracted to each other? This is a danger that goes back to the dawn of time. We’d have to take down most of the paintings in art galleries if we applied that moral judgement to everything. This movement is a very good thing, as long as it doesn't go too far. Because it is appalling when people abuse their position of power to profit sexually, or use violence, or are careless about the age of their victims. Every case is different.
You’ve directed both Monteverdi and later Baroque works. Which is easer to direct, Monteverdi or Handel?
Monteverdi is much more fascinating because he's more modern. It's a through-recitative, so it's closer to mainstream theatre. There are da capo elements, as in Handel, but the texture is more open.
Many opera fans would gladly sit through four hours of Wagner, but balk at the formal conventions and repetitions in Baroque opera. How would you respond to such reservations?
It’s just a different idiom. What I like about Baroque opera is that the music is an indicator. It’s up to you how to colour it dramatically. Whereas Wagner’s music spells everything out. You need to make Wagner more enigmatic to get some poetry in the staging. Baroque opera is a riddle that needs to be deciphered.
This year you take over the leadership of the Aix-en-Provence Festival. What are your plans for the festival?
I can’t reveal any specific plans, or Aix will kill me. I will continue the work I’ve done in Amsterdam, and also build on the achievements of my predecessor Bernard Fouccroulle. I work organically, letting things grow. I never try to impose my ideas on artists. It’s my job to listen to their dreams and try to realise them, taking them along on a bigger journey.
At DNO you have programmed several successful co-productions with opera houses and festivals, including Aix. Are there any advantages to co-productions besides the obvious financial ones?
Co-productions are not only necessary financially, but, and perhaps even more so, artistically. Sometimes it takes an enormous effort to convince an artist to take on a particular project. It took me decades to convince Simon McBurney, a personal friend, to stage his first opera, Alexander Raskatov’s A Dog’s Heart. That led to him directing two other operas, The Magic Flute and The Rake’s Progress, both shared with Aix. It is also more gratifying for artists when more people around the world get to see their work.