The death of Pierre Audi, director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, who had directed more than one hundred productions

With his epicurean curves, warm brown eyes, and melting voice, Pierre Audi carried the hedonism of the southern Mediterranean from which he hailed. The French-speaking Lebanese-British director and opera director died on Saturday, May 3, at the age of 67, in a hotel in Beijing, the city where he was preparing the upcoming production of Wagner's Siegfried and Twilight of the Gods , recently staged at the Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie in Brussels. He had accepted the generous challenge of completing "The Tetralogy" initiated by Romeo Castellucci, after it had been abandoned for financial reasons.

In fifty years, the current director of the Aix-en-Provence Lyric Art Festival had programmed more than 450 productions and directed over a hundred productions: the world of music and art has lost one of its most prolific and endearing figures, one of the most ardent defenders of freedom of thought and enterprise.

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