History of the Festival

1948: the courtyard becomes a theatre…

At the start it was the courtyard of the Archbishop’s palace, a service area where the carriages stopped. Thanks to the involvement of a group of men and women revolving round a visionary artistic director, this courtyard was soon raised to being a major location for the Festival.

The situation in France after the war was a fertile breeding ground for an artistic renaissance, as the setting up of the Cannes and Avignon festivals, in 1946 and 1947 respectively, demonstrates.

If the seventh art and the theatre took the honours with the establishment of two festivals entirely devoted to them, the world of music had still not answered the call in 1947. Gabriel Dussurget (1904-1996), an art enthusiast and a knowledgeable lover of music, decided to make up for this omission. But his insatiable curiosity and determination were not enough to bring into existence the ambitious project he was developing in this mind. So he had to call on the financial support of Countess Lily Pastré, a great friend of the arts who belonged to the haute bourgeoisie of Marseilles.  

The countess, however, had not waited for Gabriel Dussurget to start sponsoring the theatre and music. A founder of the charitable association “So that the spirit lives”, during the war she surrounded herself – totally scorning the danger – with Jewish and poor artists with the “lack of awareness and heroism of a sleepwalker”. Her country house in Provence became a permanent place of welcome and refuge for musicians on the run.

Endowed with a passionate temperament, Lily Pastré was immediately enthusiastic about the idea of helping to establish a music festival in Provence. In addition to the financial resources she made available for the project, she did not hesitate to offer her château of Montredon to host the event. Such a cultural location, she thought, would contribute to the recovery of the city founded by the Phocaeans. Gabriel Dussurget was far from being in agreement with her: this place and the town of Marseilles in general were not appropriate locations, he thought.

Gabriel Dussurget and Lily Pastré criss-crossed the region looking for the ideal location to hold the Festival. They finally agreed on the town of Aix-en-Provence. Gabriel Dussurget set his heart on the courtyard of the Archbishop’s Palace, a real revelation that, paradoxically, he describes as an austere if not decrepit place: “peeling walls, a fountain that naturally had no water flowing, and a tree that raised itself like a hand towards the sky”.

Once the location had been chosen, Gabriel Dussurget managed to get the financial backing of the Aix Casino, thus enabling the Festival to get off the ground.

The first Festival took place in July 1948. The concerts and the recitals followed one after another in the courtyard of the Archbishop’s Palace, in the Jas-de-Bouffan district, in the Museum of Tapestries and various other places in the town of Aix-en-Provence.

In parallel with these musical events, an opera made its entry: Mozart’s Così fan tutte, a work that was not known to the French public, its last performance having taken place on the stage of the Opera Comique in 1826.

To put on the opera, Gabriel Dussurget employed very artisan methods. He got together a cast that he himself rehearsed, he hired Georges Wakhévitch to create the small decor at the back of the stage and managed to get the services of Hans Rosbaud, the resident conductor of the Baden Baden Sudwestfunk orchestra. It was under his baton that the Festival orchestra played until 1962. Edmonde Charles-Roux, a French literary lady and a loyal supporter of the Festival remembers with emotion this first production:

I think that the power of this first performance at Aix was that it was a success, displaying great taste and fine musical quality, but a performance by amateurs.

Edmonde Charles-Roux

Gabriel Dussurget also evokes this atmosphere:

The singers were, let’s admit it, no more than honest. Georges Wakhévitch (the artist who painted the scenery of the 1948 Così fan tutte) was an old friend […] and agreed to draw a canopy, a few feathers… in short, a small decor to allow the performance to take place. We had put benches in the courtyard and some very low, tiered, steps and the decor was plonked in the angle of the old shed that served as our backstage. Wakhévitch, to give a backdrop to the stage had painted the walls himself.

Gabriel Dussurget

And the charm did not take long to get working…

 

Gabriel Dussurget interviewed by Ève Ruggieri in Aix-en-Provence, 22 July 1992 (INA)

1948-1973: the era of Dussurget, the magician of Aix

I always personally auditioned all the singers I hired. (…) And in the role I had in mind for them. And not just one aria: I wanted them to sing almost the entire work and say all the recitatives. (…) To discover the right one, I listened to many. I spent my time doing that.

Gabriel Dussurget

1948

The success of the 1948 production of Così fan tutte and of the entire edition reassures backers of the Casino municipal d’Aix en Provence. The Festival is able to carry on, and quickly gains international fame despite its modest beginnings.

1949

It was with the production of Don Giovanni, put on in 1949, that the full splendour of the Festival was revealed. This new impetus can be explained in particular by the arrival of the decorator and poster artist, Cassandre, a friend of Gabriel Dussurget. He was given two important tasks: firstly, the design of the decor for Don Giovanni, and secondly, the building of a theatre to replace the rudimentary installation that had been used for the performance of Così fan tutte in 1948.

Kept on for 24 years, this theatre and the constraints that stemmed from it, proved to be decisive for the programming of the Festival. Its small dimensions (seven metres in depth) meant that it could only host orchestras with a small number of players (baroque or classical chamber orchestras). So, from the start the Festival placed itself under the sign of Mozart, virtually all of whose operas were performed in the first years: Così fan tutte in 1948 and 1950, Don Giovanni in 1949, The Abduction from the Seraglio in 1951, The Marriage of Figaro in 1952, Idomeneo in 1963 and La Clemenza di Tito in 1974. While this choice of programming may seem quite ordinary today, Edmonde Charles-Roux reminds us that it did not lack audacity at the time:

In a South of France where the Italian stone masons, on their scaffolding, sang Verdi, where theatres only offered Verdi to the public, practising a dyed-in-the-wool Italianism, putting on Mozart’s operas could seem revolutionary.

Edmonde Charles-Roux

So, the Festival devoted itself to getting the public to discover unknown works, giving it back a taste for Mozart’s operas, and revisiting the early repertoire with Monteverdi, Rameau and Gluck, as well as opera buffa and starting on comic opera with Cimarosa, Grétry and Haydn, Rossini and Gounod, but also contemporary music through commissions for composers such as Arthur Honneger with La Guirlande de Campra in 1952.

The Festival also attracted the presence of the most eminent personalities of France’s artistic and literary life. Musicians, painters, writers and theatre folk gathered in Aix full of an enthusiasm that was perpetually renewed. François Mauriac describes, with emotion, the balmy evenings in Aix and the ‘Don Juan to the stars’, praising both the quality of the productions and the overall magic of the Festival.

A great discoverer of voices and imbued with nostalgia for Russian ballets, Gabriel Dussurget planned to make the Festival d'Aix a special place for creativity both for composers and promising painters. So, artists like André Derain, Balthus, André Masson, Jean-Denis Malclès, and Jean Cocteau harnessed their talent and creativity in the service of the Festival’s productions, as did Aix composers such as André Campra et Darius Milhaud.

1954

The Festival expands into spaces throughout Provence, including the Val d’Enfer quarry in Les Baux-de-Provence for an extraordinary performance of Charles Gounod’s Mireille. The sets and costumes, designed once again by Georges Wakhévitch, form a Provençal fresco celebrating the Festival’s ties to its region.

1966

A memorable and enchanting production of Pelléas et Mélisande — revived in 1968 —with sets by Jacques Dupont highlights the Festival’s and Gabriel Dussurget’s commitment to French music. Gabriel Bacquier gives a magnificent performance as Golaud.

1972

In 1959, Gabriel Dussurget was appointed artistic adviser to Georges Auric at the Paris Opera and occupied this role until 1972 when he also gave up the management of the Festival d'Aix. It has to be said that the arrival in the mid-1960s of a new managing director who was concerned about profitability, to head the Aix Casino, then the main financial sponsor of the Festival, triggered Gabriel Dussurget’s resignation.

1973

With Gabriel Dussurget having left his position as artistic director of the Festival, the edition is devoted entirely to instrumental music, awaiting the 1974 season. The Festival d’Aix lives on, and is now solidly rooted in the city.

1974-1981

The Festival must continue to be a great festival of song: singing will reign as the absolute master, and each season will focus entirely or partly on it.

Bernard Lefort

That was the motto of the new director of the Festival, Bernard Lefort, who planned to make the Festival d'Aix a great celebration of singing. A new era started, during which Mozart lost his "privileged" place in favour of bel canto. If Bernard Lefort decided to revive the taste for this repertoire of the early 19th century, it was that it was still not very well known by modern music lovers.  

Two major productions of Rossini marked the start of the new director’s mandate; first, there was Semiramis by Rossini in 1980 with an exceptional duo made up of Montserrat Caballé and Marilyn Horne; and then there was Tancredi that brought together Marilyn Horne and Katia Ricciarelli in 1981.

Bernard Lefort also wanted to make the Festival an expression of inclusiveness. The events of May 1968 had highlighted the elitist and Parisian character of the Festival, which was something the new director tried to remedy. To do this, he included on the programme, for six years running, opera buffa like Mozart’s The Impresario, Pergolesi’s The Servant Mistress, and Donizizetti’s Don Pasquale that were performed in the Quatre-Dauphins square. He also committed himself to celebrating singing and vocal expression in all their forms and thus reach a wider public. This celebration took the form of jazz concerts with Ella Fitzgerald, folk music with Joan Baez and Spanish and Berber songs.

Lastly, he initiated the “An hour with…” recitals at the end of the afternoon in the cloister of the cathedral of Saint-Sauveur that enabled the public to discover young singers in a more intimate and less onerous way than in the theatre of the Archbishop’s palace. So the mid-1970’s were characterised by a real desire to make the Festival more democratic.

1982-1996

In taking over this festival, my primary wish is not to disturb the mysterious balance which is due to so many factors and that leads everyone who comes to Aix to say that the music there is not quite like music elsewhere.

Louis Erlo

“Loyalty and innovation” were the key word of Louis Erlo who expanded the baroque repertoire considerably with Lully, Campra, and Rameau, but also Purcell and Gluck. Louis Erlo also wanted to develop the Mozart repertoire of the Festival.

The major works, as well as the less well known and less frequently played youthful works of the Austrian composer, found themselves together on the posters for the Festival. Louis Erlo also offered masterpieces of the 20th century by Prokofiev and Britten. In line with Gabriel Dussurget’s plan to promote young talent, the new director offered the people of Aix a whole host of young singers, sprinkled with some “stars”.

1982

World staged premiere of Les Boréades by Jean-Philippe Rameau (John-Eliott Gardiner & Jean-Louis Martinoty)

1985

The theatre of the Archbishop’s palace, in its turn, underwent some alterations in 1985. The architect, Bernard Guillaumot, gave the stage the standard dimensions and improved its technical facilities, all of which made it easier to host outside performances and carry out co-productions. Louis Erlo was well aware of the danger of standardisation that this implied, but he said he would provide “the guarantees that were needed so that the performances did not lose their identity when they transferred”.

1990

Les Indes Galantes (Arts Florissants – William Chritie & Alfredo Arias)

1996

When Louis Erlo left, the Festival was having to deal with inextricable financial problems.

1998-2006: Stéphane Lissner and the renewal of the Festival

With the creation of the Académie Européenne de Musique, a new adventure begins for the Festival. The Académie will help foster the emergence of a new generation of artists who have integrated the musical upheavals of the last 50 years. It will enable these artists to take on the entire repertoire, irrespective of genre. It will be a place of discovery, encounters and exchange between young singers, instrumentalists, composers and stage directors.

Stéphane Lissner

1998

The year 1998 was marked by the arrival of Stéphane Lissner and the complete renovation of the theatre of the Archbishop’s palace. The Lissner era was inaugurated with a production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni by Peter Brook. The mingling of the worlds of theatre, dance and opera was the keystone of this new programming that brought together famous artists such as Pina Bausch, Trisha Brown, Anne-Teresa de Keersmaeker, Patrice Chéreau and Luc Bondy.

The Festival was infused with a new dynamism with the establishment at Venelles, a few kilometres from Aix-en-Provence, of workshops to build scenery and make costumes. This enabled the number of international co-productions to be increased and made the Festival more self-sufficient.

Lastly in 1998, Stéphane Lissner set up the European Academy of Music, that was conceived as an extension of the Festival into teaching and fostering young talent (instrumentalists, singers, directors, conductors and composers), helping them meet the public through numerous concerts, conferences and master classes.

2000

The Festival also became a place of intense musical creativity with numerous commissions being handed out to composers: Festin by Yan Maresz; The Balcony by Peter Eötvös, based on Jean Genet’s play, in 2002; Kyrielle on the feeling of things by François Sarhan on a text by Jacques Roubaud in 2003; Hanjo by Toshio Hosokawa after Hanjo; Nô by Yukio Mishima in 2004; and Julie by Philippe Boesmans, based on Miss Julie by August Strindberg in 2005. Reopened in 2000, the Jeu de Paume theatre, with its intimate dimensions, was an ideal place to put on some of these new works.

2003

The 2003 edition is marked by the intermittents du spectacle strike, leading to the cancelation of nearly all performances.

2006

The Ring cycle begins with performances of Das Rheingold at the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and staged by Stéphane Braunschweig. This creative team ensures that the Ring will continue beyond Stéphane Lissner’s tenure.

2007-2018

Appeal to a very wide audience and allow it, thanks to the performers' voices, to interpret the emerging world of tomorrow.

Bernard Foccroulle

2007

• Creation of Passerelles

On the initiative of Bernard Foccroulle, the Festival invested unreservedly in the younger generation, both in terms of audiences and artists, the future players of the musical life. Particular attention was paid to raising awareness among the young and potential audiences from among the socially vulnerable. This was done through a vast teaching programme for schools and local associations. The development of educational and socio-artistic service (Passerelles) helped to firmly root the Festival in the local region. The Festival also engaged with the musicians, singers and composers of the future through its Académie, a centre for training and for helping musicians find work.

• The Grand Théâtre de Provence is inaugurated with the continuation of the Tetralogy through Stéphane Braunschweig’s production of Die Walküre.

2010

Residency of the London Symphony Orchestra begins at the Festival d’Aix.

2012

World premiere of Written on Skin by George Benjamin staged by Katie Mitchell

2013

In 2013, the audience inclusiveness policy has been widening with the launch of Aix en juin, an introduction to July's operas programme closing with a great outdoor and free concert on the Cours Mirabeau before over 5000 spectators.

The transmission of know-how and the widening of the Festival’s public was accompanied by a policy of sustainable development through a number of significant environmental initiatives.

After having contributed to the Marseille-Provence 2013 - European Capital of Culture project, the Festival is now opening up to the Mediterranean basin that is both so near and so far away. The Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, which since 2014 has been a part of the Festival, is the best proof of this. That said, the Festival d'Aix is planning to take a further step towards “the other” and start a constructive and lasting dialog. And, just as the world is changing, the Festival is continuously widening its horizons, as can be seen with the launch in September 2015 of Medinea, the network of Mediterranean artists and composers.

2014

In 2014, the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence is awarded Best Opera Festival by the International Opera Awards in London.

The Mediterranean Youth Orchestra is integrated into the Festival d'Aix structure.

2017

World premiere of Pinocchio by Philippe Boesmans

World premiere of Kalîla Wa Dimna, first opera in Arabic language

2018

The Festival celebrates its 60th anniversary.

 

Bernard Foccroulle just after being appointed as Festival director, France 3 news, 30 June 2007 (INA)

Since 2019: "The Festival d’Aix is a precious planet in the firmament of the international performing arts" (Pierre Audi)

When Pierre Audi was named director of the Festival d’Aix for the 2019 season, his appointment ushered in a new era while still honouring the fundamental qualities that have ensured the Festival’s success since 1948. Pierre Audi has reaffirmed the Festival’s commitment to the vibrancy of opera, despite global challenges due to the COVID-19 crisis, climate change, and the resurgence of war in Europe.

As a leading stage director, Pierre Audi has devoted much of his career to the oeuvres of Monteverdi and Wagner, as well as to twentieth-century works and new productions. Particularly attuned to contemporary art, he has collaborated with numerous visual artists, such as Karel Appel, Georg Baselitz and Anish Kapoor. At the Festival d'Aix, he invites renowned figures in international stage direction — including Lotte de Beer, Andrea Breth, Romeo Castellucci, Barrie Kosky, Simon McBurney and Simon Stone — and rising stars of the new generation, such as Silvia Costa and Ted Huffman.

Attempting to renew opera is not only about offering interpretations based on new dramaturgies; it’s also about shifting the lines in the relationship between the audience, the performers and the content.

Pierre Audi, Lyrik, 2022

Pierre Audi breaks down barriers between the arts and expands the boundaries of opera; he has even made that concept his trademark and implemented it throughout his long career as director of performing arts institutions. At the age of 22, he founded the Almeida Theatre and its Festival of Contemporary Music and Performance in London, which he headed until 1989. He was then appointed artistic director of the Dutch National Opera (1988-2018); while serving as head of that opera company, he also oversaw the Holland Festival (2004-2015) and founded the Opera Forward Festival in 2015, both places of innovation and interdisciplinarity in the world of opera. His predilection for atypical venues and for the festival format became even more apparent when he served as artistic director of the Park Avenue Armory in New York as of 2015, and again when he accepted the same position at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in 2019.

Through his original and innovative offerings, Pierre Audi strives to open up the world of opera to a multitude of art forms — in order to break down its barriers and inject it with new life — by staging non-theatrical works; proposing projects that combine music, the visual arts and video; and fostering musical theatre. In 2019, a work by Mozart took centre the stage at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché for the first time since the Festival’s inception — not with an opera production, however, but through Romeo Castellucci’s staging of the Requiem. In 2022, the stage director built upon this approach by staging Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, at the Stadium de Vitrolles, a venue that was reopened for the occasion. Numerous productions and artistic offerings have made the Festival d’Aix a place for interdisciplinarity and for dialogue between the arts, whether it be digital opera, with Blank Out (Michel van der Aa, 2019); a collaboration with the Comédie-Française for The Threepenny Opera (Thomas Ostermeier, 2023); musical theatre (Woman at Point Zero, 2022); or opera and cinema (Rebecca Zlotowski, Bertrand Mandico and Evangelia Kranioti for the Ballets russes, 2023). Moreover, in 2020, the global pandemic led to the creation of the Digital Stage, thus facilitating the development of innovative musical and artistic content.

As a tribute to composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who has made significant contributions to numerous past editions of the Festival, Pierre Audi has marked his programming through the creation of INCISES, a series of events that showcases contemporary music by spanning the gap between opera and the visual arts. Creation is thus at the heart of the Festival's programming, through its operas (Innocence [Kaija Saariaho] and The Arab Apocalypse [Samir Ohed-Tamini] in 2021; Il Viaggio, Dante [Pascal Dusapin] and Woman at Point Zero [Bushra El-Turk] in 2022; Picture a day like this [George Benjamin] and The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions [Philip Venables] in 2023), its concerts (La natura del mondo [Pascal Dusapin, 2021], Alchymia [Thomas Adès, 2022], Ces belles années… [Betsy Jolas, 2023]) and the many creations that regularly emerge from the residencies and concerts of the Académie and the Mediterranean (e.g. Gamal Abdel-Rahim, João Barradas). In addition, INCISES places the spotlight on contemporary music, routinely programming works by composers of today, such as George Benjamin and Wolfgang Rihm, in its concerts.

Pierre Audi reaffirms the Festival’s tradition of symphonic concerts and chamber music by programming the greatest names in conducting, as well as international orchestras such as Ensemble Pygmalion, the London Symphony Orchestra, Cappella Mediterranea, the Balthasar Neumann Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris. He offers a rich programme of operas in concert version, including Norma in 2022; and Otello, Lucie de Lammermoor and Le Prophète in 2023.

Lastly, following in the footsteps of Bernard Foccroulle and carrying on one of the Festival’s long traditions, Pierre Audi has deepened the Festival’s Mediterranean roots. Pierre Audi was born in Beirut, fled the Lebanese civil war to continue his studies in France and England, and then developed his career throughout Europe. He has also contributed to the development of the Festival’s Mediterranean bent by recruiting conductor Duncan Ward as the permanent music director of the Mediterranean Youth Orchestra in 2020 and by pursuing a rich programme of intercultural concerts during Aix en juin and the Festival in July.

Pierre Audi has been renewed for a second term at the helm of the Festival d’Aix as of 2024, and will be implementing an approach aimed to help audiences rediscover and more fully appreciate the Festival’s heritage.