Pierre Oda: The biography of the impresario-revolutionary
On May 3, Pierre Oda died, an outstanding impresario, an integer, director, artistic director of the opera festival in the ex-enans and the Park Avenue Armory Cultural Center in New York, which determined the appearance of the world art scene over the past forty years.
Pierre Odya had a kind of relationship with space and time. He seemed to not notice them: he was born in Lebanon, died in Beijing, studied in Paris and Oxford, made a name in London and Amsterdam, and in recent years he moved between the south of France and North America and in the era of the defeator could break in a day in New York to hold a particularly important meeting. He died at the age of 67, by the standards of the opera industry barely reaching the age of early maturity. It really was very young, passionate, in a good way greedy, contagious in his love for the work of a person. Odya entered the world art scene of twenty and a little and instantly ended up in her epicenter, because of this there was a feeling that he was always.
But instead of resting on his laurels, Odly, until the last day of his life, reinvented himself and the reality around, obsessed with interest in all the new – repertoire, artists, managerial strategies.
He first felt the taste for risk in the early 1980s, when he founded the Almeida Theater. At that time, the idea of an interdisciplinary platform, under the roof of which dramatic actors coexist, new music and dance, looked radical in conservative London. Having secured the support of investors, from the old ODS library, he created almost the main outpost of actual art in the UK: the annual Musical Festival of Almeida has become a place of pilgrimage to the key figures of the avant -garde of the twentieth century, from Ernst Kseshek to John Kage, and the premiere of “demons” Yuri Lyubimov (1985) was the first setting released, released released The disgraced director after the deprivation of Soviet citizenship. Coproduction with the Milan Piccolo and the Parisian « Oder » automatically brought the newborn Almeida to the theater establishment, and Odi was seriously spoke on the continent. His work at the junction of music and drama did not go unnoticed: in 1988, the murderer of the thirtieth anniversary of the Presario was barely offered the post of artistic director De Nederlandse Opera.
Pierre Odya never missed the opportunity to plunge the story of how in his youth he founded a film club in his native Beirut, whose guests were outstanding directors of the twentieth century in the range from Pazolini to Jacques Tati. He gathered the same collection of old and new masters in Amsterdam, where he lingered for three decades, setting an absolute record among the intensity of the largest opera houses in the world. As in Almeida, he continued to bet on modern music and dialogue of the arts: by order of the Odin-Producer, “Letters to Vermera” Louis Andrissen were written, “Marco Polo” Tan Dunya and two more dozen new scores, and the Odo-director consistently turned to the opera faith of the largest artists of the century-Yannis Kunellis, Ainish Kapura, George Baselitsa. In 1992, De Nederlandse Opera showed the world premiere of “Life with an idiot” by Alfred Schnitsky with the scenography of Ilya Kabakov, in 2001-“Alice in Wonderland” by Alexander Knaifel, in 2010-“Dog heart” by Alexander Perekatov: with the death of Odus, the Russian culture lost one of the most influential ambassadors in the West.
Odl belonged to a rare breed of visionaries who appreciate the beauty of a strong gesture: in 1999, it was he in tandem with the artist Georgy Tsypin that Richard Wagner was the first in Amsterdam, and the central of his achievements considered the “Light” (2019), the fifteen -hour performance of the Carlhain cosmological epic epic epic epic epic Shtokhausen.
At the head of De Nederlandse Opera, he did not allow the oud for a second to forget that he came from an independent scene in a big opera business.
However, if the circumstances demanded that he demonstrated such a professional grip that many of his colleagues could envy: when a year ago the La Monnie theater terminated the contract for the production of the Ring with Romeo Castelucci, who managed to release only the first two tetralogy parts, the project on the summer was picked up by Pierre Oda – the “death of the gods”, shown in Brussels in the last March, became his last large large large large large large premiere.
The Wagnerian taste for the polyphony of disciplines, honed over the years of the leadership of Holland Festival (2005–2014), was completely manifested into Park Avenue Armory-the former army barracks turned into one of the most important in New York, the public and Gagosian publishing a performance since 2015. Projects of Ai Weiwei, Nika Cave and William Kentridge.
It is quite logical that after leaving Amsterdam in 2018, Oda headed the most flexible and dynamically developing opera forum of Europe-a festival in the French ex-envans.
And immediately he began with experiments: he gave the vow to conduct one world premiere a year – and held his promise, first put the Jakomomo Puccini and Alban Berg in exse, introduced the new festival venue – the Vitrole stadium, which had been standing with a lonely abandonment from Marseille to Provence, expanded the expansion to the neighboring arle, adapting it to the neighboring arl Opera needs space of the art center Luma Frank Heri. Career Pierre Odya broke off at a peak, and another of a single-part figure in the opera world is not yet visible.
