Jean-Louis Martinoty

Jean-Louis Martinoty (20 January 1946 in Étampes – 27 January 2016 in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French opera director and writer.[1][2] Renowned for his stagings of baroque operas in the eighties, he was also General Administrator of the Paris Opera (1986–1989).

Jean-Louis Martinoty in 2007

Biography

Jean-Louis Martinoty spent his childhood and his teens in Algeria where his father was a tax official. In 1961, his parents came back to France and settled in Nice. He studied classical letters and learned cello. He started his professional life as a French teacher for some years, then as writer and music critic at the newspaper "L'humanité". For an interview, he met in 1972 the lyric director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle who invited him to come to the Salzburg Festival where he was preparing Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. One day, he replaced him for a repetition and since this time, he became his assistant for his stagings and wrote for him the scripts for most of his opera films (whose La clemenza di Tito, Madama Butterfly, Carmina Burana). He made himself one film (Pasticcio from Haendel) and realized two documentaries about Italian mannerism. In 1992, he married with Tamara Adloff.[3]

Jean-Louis Martinoty made his first staging in 1975 with Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer' s Night Dream at the Strasbourg Opera followed by Offenbach's La Perichole. Then the Lyon Opera asked him to make two stagings of baroque operas while baroque music was forgotten since more than two centuries in France (Cavalli's Ercole Amante in 1979, Charpentier's David et Jonathas in 1981). He continued with a lot of baroque productions all along his career. Among the more famous : Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione of Poppea in 1982 with the baroque conductor Jean-Claude Malgoire and especially in the same year Jean-Philippe Rameau's Les Boreades in the Musical Festival of Aix-en-Provence with John Elliot Gardiner as conductor. This last opera, put on for the first time since 1770, obtained a striking success and the Lyric Grand Prix Review.[4] Some years later, Lully's, Alceste in the Champs-Elysées Theater in Paris has been stayed in the memories, as the rare Salieri'sTarare, Cesti's L'Argia and Gassmann's L'Opera Seria in the Schewtzingen Festival.

His baroque world's experience made him write a book in 1990 "Voyages à l'intérieur de l'opéra baroque, de Monteverdi à Mozart" (Voyages inside baroque opera, from Monteverdi to Mozart) in which he analysed a dozen works on the dramatic, scenographic and political levels. But his many stagings (about a hundred between 1975 and 2015) were not only baroque operas and addressed the whole opera repertory on French and International stages : Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at Covent Garden, Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in Karlsruhe Festival for which he made also decors, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld in the Paris Opera, Bizet's Carmen in Tokyo, Mozart's Don Giovanni in the Wiener Staatsoper,[5] etc. He made also an incursion into the Viennese operetta with Frantz Lehar's The Merry Widow and Johan Strauss's The Gipsy Baron at the Zurich Opera under the musical direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and even musical comedy with The Little Prince from Saint-Exupery's novel on a music by Richard Cocciante at The Casino de Paris in 2002.

His solid actor's leadership, his erudite stagings, in regular collaboration with the Austrian decorator Hans Schavernoch and the costume designer Daniel Ogier, were applauded most of the time, such his production Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro which received again Grand Prix of the best lyric production.[6] Created in the Champs-Elysées Theater in 2001, it was three times taken back during the following seven seasons, then in the Wiener Staatsoper where it entered the directory. In contrast, Gounod's Faust at the Bastille Opera in 2011 with Roberto Alagna in the title role was the object of a salvo of negative criticisms, in particular because of the loaded decoration and of his direction considered too "kitsch".[7]

He did a remarked come-back in 2012 with Verdi's Macbeth created in the Bordeaux National Opera. This production was his last staging. Jean-Louis Martinoty died at the age of 70 years old the 27 January 2016 in a Neuilly-Sur-Seine's clinic after a heart operation. Fleur Pellerin, Culture and Communication Minister, made him honor in a press release : "...The Opera world is mourning the death of one who was revealed very early as one of the best directors of his generation ... He was also one of the great administrators of the Paris opera, at the same time guardian of the lyrical tradition and visionary open to modernity [...] He was on of those directors whose art is to remain totally at the service of music's great pieces, giving us totally to see to allow us to better hear them..." .[8] In October 2017, his friend Jean Ristat published a long elegiac poem about his disappearance, "Éloge Funèbre de Monsieur Martinoty" ("Funeral Praise of Mr Martinoty").

Jean-Louis Martinoty is buried in Joiselle's cemetery, Marne's village where he lived for forty-five years.

General Administrator of the Paris Opera

Jean-Louis Martinoty has been General Administrator of the Paris Opera from 1986 to 1989. Appointed to the general surprise on the 12 February 1986 after the resignation of his predecessor, the Italian Massimo Bogianckino elected Florence's mayor, he must have led the house in the very tense context before the opening of Bastille Opera House, characterized by internal battles and significant budget problems.[9][10]

Passionned by contemporary art, he innovated however many times during his mandate:

Opera productions

Awards
  • "Prix Claude Rostand" for David et Jonathas by Marc-Antoine Charpentier at the Opera Lyon, season 1980/1981[11]
  • "Prix Claude Rostand" for L'incoronazione of Poppea by Monteverdi at the Tourcoing Atelier Lyric, season 1981/1982[11]
  • "Grand Prix de la meilleure production lyrique" for Les Boreades by Jean-Philippe Rameau at the Aix-En-Provence Festival, season 1982/1983[11]
  • "Grand Prix de la meilleure production lyrique" for The marriage of Figaro by Mozart at the Champs-Elysées Theater, season 2001/2002[11]

References
  1. Roux, Marie-Aude (8 January 2016). "Le metteur en scène d'opéra Jean-Louis Martinoty est mort". Le Monde. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
  2. "Décès de Jean-Louis Martinoty à 70 ans". Le Figaro. 20 December 2018. Retrieved 21 March 2019.
  3. "Biographie Jean-Louis Martinoty". Who's who. 12 April 2016.
  4. "La création des boréades de Rameau à Aix-En-Provence". www.ina.fr. 21 July 1982.
  5. "Bringing a picnic to the poltergeist : Don Giovanni in Vienna". www.bachtrack.com. 16 January 2018.
  6. "Une fête de l'esprit". lesechos.fr. 17 October 2001.
  7. "Un Faust maudit et plombé". www.lefigaro.fr. 29 September 2011.
  8. "Hommage de Fleur Pellerin, Ministre de la Culture et de la Communication, à Jean-Louis Martinoty". www.culture.gouv.fr. 28 January 2016.
  9. de Saint-Pulgent, Maryvonne (1991). Le syndrome de l'Opéra. éditions Robert Laffont. pp. Chapitre 12 : Le temps des remises en cause (1984–1988). ISBN 2-221-06625-1.
  10. "Jean-Louis Martinoty 1946-1976". Opéra de Paris Magazine.
  11. "Les précédents palmarès". Syndicat Professionnel de la Critique de Théâtre, Musique et Danse. 4 March 2016.
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