This year’s Birgit Nilsson Prize – classical music’s most lucrative award at $1 million – has been given to the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the prestigious French summer opera festival established in 1948.
In particular, Kaija Saariaho’s opera Innocence, which premiered at Aix in 2021 before the composer’s death in 2023, was given special citation by Susanne Rydén, President of the Birgit Nilsson Foundation.
Pierre Audi, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence’s General Director since September 2018, unexpectedly died earlier this month at the age of 67. Rydén commented that Audi’s “artistic passion and dedication was truly inspirational”, and that “today is both a moment of celebration and deep sadness”.
The festival is especially known for its new opera productions. “The Festival has produced key milestones” in modern and contemporary opera, Rydén said, “which have perpetuated the art form and added an important chapter to music history.”
Audi gave a statement acknowledging the prize before his death. “No words are warm enough to express our deepest thanks at receiving this wonderful honour, which comes at a momentous turning point in our 77-year history. The Birgit Nilsson Prize will help the Festival cross these challenging times, which have threatened its artistic course.”
Audi cited the festival’s “determined policy to create new works and stay an inspiring birthplace for new operas”. It is not yet known who will take up his role as the festival’s General Director.
Audi was also the founder of London’s Almeida Theatre, initiating the Almeida International Festival of Contemporary Music and Performance in the 1980s, later joining Dutch National Opera in 1988 at the age of 30.
Since joining Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, new productions overseen by Audi, in addition to Saariaho’s Innocence, have included Sir George Benjamin’s Picture a Day Like This, and Philip Venables and Ted Huffman’s The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions. In 2022, the Festival hosted Romeo Castellucci’s provocative staging of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony – a methodical unearthing of a mass grave.
Founded in 1948, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence’s first opera performance was Mozart’s Così fan tutte in 1949, then little-known in France. Later from the 1970s, the festival’s reputation for opera was more firmly established, broadening into modern and contemporary commissions through the 1980s and 90s.
This year, Aix sees new productions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Charpentier’s Louise, and Cavalli’s La Calisto, with a new version of Britten’s Billy Budd adapted by Oliver Leith and Ted Huffman. Director Peter Sellars also returns to the festival, to direct the world premiere of Sivan Eldar and Ganavya Doraiswamy’s The Nine Jewelled Deer.
