[ad_1]
PARIS – Dressed in a dark blue suit, masked, and with a part in his hair so straight that it could be used as a rule, Alexander Neef, the new director of the Paris Opera, was holding a meeting in his airy office. It was October 5, the day the company’s eminent ballet was due to give its first performance since strikes closed both opera theaters last December. But Paris had just been declared a high-risk coronavirus zone – the latest sign that normalcy was still far in the future.
Mr Neef was barely five weeks in the position of director of the Opera, among the most prestigious positions on the world cultural scene, overseeing an annual operating budget of 220 million euros ($ 261.3 million) . There should have been no better time to start than this, the company’s 350th anniversary, which was set to culminate this fall with a dazzling new production of Wagner’s epic “Ring” cycle.
Instead, Mr. Neef had entered directly into an annus horribilis. The strikes from December to March interrupted 84 performances, opening a budget deficit of 45 million euros. Then the coronavirus began to spread, causing lockdowns and extra months of performance to be canceled. An open letter circulated about institutional racism within the company. There have been complaints in the press about the generous envelope – around 81 million euros – of state aid to the Opera, granted before the results of an audit of its finances.
Mr. Neef, 46, managing director of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto and artistic director of Santa Fe Opera, was expected to step down and take over in Paris next year. But in June, his predecessor, Stéphane Lissner, suddenly announced that he would be leaving early for a new start at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Italy. Blinded by this news and now juggling multiple jobs on two continents, Mr. Neef would have to go it alone.
“I knew August 5 that I would start September 1,” he said coldly over lunch.
And all this before the second coronavirus lockdown, which French President Emmanuel Macron announced in mid-October and which ended dreams of live opera and ballet at least until November.
“When we saw the number of new cases, you can unfortunately see these things coming,” Neef said after the presidential announcement. “We were in a pretty good position and the new lockdown has created a wedge in all of our plans.”
The situation is undoubtedly grim. But Mr. Neef is at least helped by the fact that he is not new to the Opera: from 2004 to 2008 he worked here as a casting director under his mentor, the famous impresario Gérard Mortier. His insider knowledge of the institution was important, Mr Neef said, giving him confidence that he could face “one of the most complex jobs in this field”.
“I thought, would I like to go back to work with these people?” he said. “The answer was yes.”
Mr. Neef’s existing relationship within the labyrinthine, notoriously political enterprise, may well be crucial in breaking out of what ended as an icy standoff between the Opera (or at least its powerful unions) and Mr. Lissner.
“When we heard it was coming sooner, we weren’t just happy; we were extremely relieved ”, declared Fréderic Laroque, violinist in the orchestra of the company. “Lissner was on the phone, which is understandable, and you felt like the administration was being beaten. Nothing was happening.
Mr. Neef was born in the small town of Rosswälden, Germany, near Stuttgart, and grew up in a family that was not particularly interested in high culture. He discovered classical music through radio and music lessons at school and began to study the piano at the age of 9.
Although he is passionate about music, records opera shows, and attends as many performances as possible, he studies Latin and modern history in college.
“I never saw music or opera as a professional opportunity,” he says. “It was too far from my origins.”
But he became friends with a group of musicians who knew Mr. Mortier, then director of the Salzburg Festival in Austria. The friends started working there as unpaid interns and Mr. Neef became Mr. Mortier’s assistant.
“He was extremely polite and organized,” baritone Thomas Hampson said of Mr. Neef. “I remember people saying, ‘Everyone should have a right arm like Alexander Neef.’”
When Mr. Mortier left Salzburg in 2001 and became the director of the Ruhrtriennale festival in Germany, Mr. Neef followed him there – then to the Paris Opera and, for a brief period, to the Opera de New York. “All of a sudden, opera and theater became a career,” Mr. Neef said.
Mr. Hampson said that there were very few administrators with Mr. Neef’s encyclopedic knowledge of repertoire and singers. “In his generation he is perhaps singular,” said Mr. Hampson. “And he’s great fun at dinner.”
When the Canadian Opera Company approached Mr. Neef, then still a casting director in Paris, in 2008, it was, he said, the first time he had considered conducting an opera. “I thought there was nothing wrong with engaging in this conversation,” he said, “and pretty much the same thing happened in Paris. We ask you, you think about it, you talk about it. If you want too much, it might be doomed to fail.
Mr. Neef was admired for making Toronto an international lyric destination, cultivating the best singers and more ambitious productions.
“He was very confident in his desires and his concepts, and you thought it came from real knowledge of opera,” said Rufus Wainwright, whose opera “Hadrian” premiered in Toronto in 2018. clear . He is very impartial when he is angry and very passionate when he is excited. He can put his foot down when running the institution, but when he encourages a composer, he can travel a bit in the clouds with you.
When disputes were between the creators of the work, Mr. Wainwright added, Mr. Neef “would stay a little bit on the sidelines and then rush out and fix everything, like a superhero.
Despite his reputation and credentials, Mr Neef was not widely seen as a favorite for the Paris post. But after a 45-minute interview with Mr. Macron, he was offered the job.
“Alexander fits the profile of what Macron wants in France,” said Matthew Epstein, a seasoned artist and opera administrator. “He is artistically social, fully aware of the North American side of the business, and has been to Europe regularly. And he’s young: he could do the job for another 20 years if he wanted to.
Mr Epstein added that while the Paris Opera can be “a poisoned chalice” for newcomers, Mr Neef’s previous experience there should serve him well. “He has huge funding problems because of the pandemic, huge manpower challenges to overcome, but I suspect he will be good at it,” he said. “He’s very fair and he doesn’t shy away from a difficult conversation.
The post is, however, on a different scale than Mr. Neef’s past experiences. He will supervise 1,895 full-time employees, compared to fewer than 100 in Toronto. In a move that didn’t exactly signal confidence, days after Mr Neef’s arrival in September, the French Minister of Culture appointed two former directors of the company to “diagnose” the current financial, organizational and artistic performance of the Opera.
But Mr Neef said he accepted their appointment “in a down-to-earth manner”. It has been helpful, he added, for others to reflect on the issues that “have been highlighted by the pandemic, if not caused by it.”
An open letter circulated by five opera dancers and signed by 400 company employees called for “ending the silence around racism”. Mr Neef said he had commissioned an external investigation into the issues, with a report expected in mid-December.
“It will help create a system of accountability and set certain goals,” he said.
Manuel Brug, critic of the German newspaper Die Welt, said the biggest concern about Mr Neef was that he was still quite young and was not an insider of French cultural circles like Mr Lissner was. .
“When you run the Paris Opera you have to be close to politicians and people with money,” Mr Brug said, adding that another concern was the ballet company, run by the former dancer. star Aurélie Dupont.
“Where are the great choreographers?” Said Mr. Brug. “Paris needs this.”
Mr Neef said he was discussing projects with Ms Dupont and wanted to commission contemporary scores “which could strengthen the relationship between musicians and dancers”. Ballet, he added, “can be both much more traditional and more modern than opera. And when you integrate that into what opera does, you can have an incredible arc between traditional and avant-garde.
But neither he nor Ms Dupont cited any potential choreographic talent, although she added that both were interested in expanding the international ballet tour. Mr Neef was equally wary of the scheduling of his first full season, 2021-2022, saying only that it was important to play French and international works and that he wanted to explore what was lacking in the modern repertoire of the Opera.
“We’ve never played an opera by Philip Glass or John Adams,” he said.
Sarah Billinghurst, former Deputy Director General of Artistic Affairs at the Metropolitan Opera and leading philanthropist, said Mr. Neef “has really taken the pulse of who is new and interesting, and he understands the need for international relationships. stars in Paris.
“Gérard Mortier loved to provoke people, but I don’t think that interests Alexander,” she added. “He wants to make you think, to show you something new.”
As Mr. Neef moved from meeting to meeting throughout the day in early October, he listened more than spoke, sometimes only intervening with a reassuring question or short comment. “I think sometimes people underestimate him because he’s calm and direct and not flamboyant,” Ms. Billinghurst said. “But he has the backbone and the solidity and a very firm faith in his taste and his decisions.”
Between meetings, Mr. Neef went briefly to the first orchestral rehearsal for the “Ring”, thanking the hundred musicians gathered for agreeing to be regularly tested for the virus, and for working in such a difficult environment.
A gigantic project for any opera, the “Ring” was intended both to celebrate the Opera’s 350th anniversary and to bid farewell to Philippe Jordan, its outgoing musical director. By then, the project had already been reduced to a concert version for a limited audience; given the new lockdown in France, it will now be played at the Bastille, the company’s largest theater, without an audience, and each of its four parts broadcast by radio.
“Everything is going from day to day now,” Neef said by telephone in early November. “We’re rehearsing ‘La Traviata’ and ‘La Bayadère’ and we’re holding our breath to see if we can perform in front of an audience in December.
But although that was not the introduction he intended – “I lost the year of silent contemplation that I would have had,” Mr Neef said – he got attached: “I am willing to do a lot of work and do a lot of nasty things if I can walk into the theater and see a performance and feel like we did it right.
[ad_2]
Source link