2023-05-26 12:09:00
The announcement by Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel created amazement after only two years at the head of the Paris Opera.
Par Florence Colombani
© TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
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NWe met him two months ago, during rehearsals for a Nixon in China which will undoubtedly remain as the highlight of his brief stay at the Paris Opera – a great moment of music, inspiring with vigor and musical precision. The vivacious Gustavo Dudamel, 42, radiated love for his job and seemed to approach the necessarily complex life of a superstar conductor without the stress or fatigue that his pace, always between two planes and two continents – he is the director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for fourteen years -, however, made it inevitable.
“I am an optimist,” he told us, and we thought he could do anything – live a fulfilling family life in Spain, where his wife, 12-year-old son, parents and grandmother live. , conduct in Paris and Los Angeles, and prepare for one of the most prestigious positions in the world, the one that belonged to Leonard Bernstein for a long time: the direction of the New York Philharmonic (his post will take place in 2026).
Will he maintain his presence on a few operas?
Centered on the superstar chef’s desire to spend more time with his loved ones, yesterday’s press release announcing his surprise resignation came as a thunderbolt. Admittedly, since the announcement of his appointment in New York, doubts have hovered over his degree of commitment to the Paris Opera, especially since he had retired from ballet. The Dante Project by Wayne McGregor (until May 31 at the Palais Garnier), the performances being finally assumed by the British chef Courtney Lewis.
READ ALSOHow conductor Gustavo Dudamel can change your lifeWatch it in rehearsal for Nixon in China, it was also to note that his ease in the relationship with the musicians was slightly tempered by the absence of a common language (Dudamel speaks exclusively English and Spanish). But the very recent announcement of the 2023-2024 season had swept away these concerns: Dudamel was given there at the head of the national orchestra of the Paris Opera at the Ravel Festival in Saint-Jean-de-Luz on August 31, then in September in Bastille for a Lohengrin highly anticipated (Dudamel rarely conducting Wagner) and finally for the French creation ofExterminating Angel, a new opera (adapted from the film by Luis Buñuel The Exterminating Angel) by British composer Thomas Adès.
Alexander Neef, the director of the Paris Opera, will soon announce what will happen to these upcoming performances: Dudamel should logically maintain his presence for at least one of the two operas. We hope so, at least, because it would attenuate a little, for the public as for the musicians, the brutality of his departure. This whole affair is furiously reminiscent of the brief stay in Paris of another star, Benjamin Millepied. The French dancer and choreographer had – like Dudamel – spent most of his career in the United States and only stayed in the French capital as dance director for one season (2015-2016). His surprise resignation had also been explained by the sacrosanct formula “only for personal reasons”. Do these reasons include a clash of cultures between personalities from the Anglo-Saxon world and a large French institution with a very particular functioning? The question remains open.
#shock #disappointment