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| Gerard Mortier, Opera Visionary, Dies at 70 | Gerard Mortier, Opera Visionary, Dies at 70 |
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| Gerard Mortier, a visionary opera company leader whose bold theatricality and updatings of the canon helped define the art form’s modern history, died on Saturday at his home in Brussels. He was 70. | Gerard Mortier, a visionary opera company leader whose bold theatricality and updatings of the canon helped define the art form’s modern history, died on Saturday at his home in Brussels. He was 70. |
| The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Simon Bauwens, Mr. Mortier’s personal assistant at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Mr. Mortier was that company’s artistic director from 2009 until last year, when his title was changed to artistic adviser in a tussle with the Spanish government over his successor after he announced in September that he was being treated for cancer. | The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Simon Bauwens, Mr. Mortier’s personal assistant at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Mr. Mortier was that company’s artistic director from 2009 until last year, when his title was changed to artistic adviser in a tussle with the Spanish government over his successor after he announced in September that he was being treated for cancer. |
| It was a characteristically feisty situation for a man who relished a battle during a four-decade career at the helm of some of the world’s most important opera companies, including the Salzburg Festival and the Paris Opera. | |
| Sometimes the battlegrounds were artistic, as in the furor over his farewell production after 10 years at Salzburg, a 2001 “Die Fledermaus” featuring drugs and Nazi thugs. | Sometimes the battlegrounds were artistic, as in the furor over his farewell production after 10 years at Salzburg, a 2001 “Die Fledermaus” featuring drugs and Nazi thugs. |
| Sometimes they were financial, as when the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, which he led from 1981 to 1991, went into debt over his lavish renovation of the opera house, complete with a floor by the blue-chip American Minimalist artist Sol Le Witt. | |
| And sometimes they were related to Mr. Mortier himself, as when he and New York City Opera parted ways in 2008, only a year and a half into his tenure. | And sometimes they were related to Mr. Mortier himself, as when he and New York City Opera parted ways in 2008, only a year and a half into his tenure. |
| But these clashes were always expressions of Mr. Mortier’s bracing and intellectually charged vision of opera, and his disdain for the decorous irrelevance often associated with it. | But these clashes were always expressions of Mr. Mortier’s bracing and intellectually charged vision of opera, and his disdain for the decorous irrelevance often associated with it. |
| In the summer of 2011, reflecting in an interview on a raucous Madrid production of Karol Szymanowski’s “King Roger” the previous fall, he said with a smile: “It was an enormous scandal, and it became an enormous success. On opening night, I said, ‘Now we are really international.’ People aren’t sleeping at the end.” | In the summer of 2011, reflecting in an interview on a raucous Madrid production of Karol Szymanowski’s “King Roger” the previous fall, he said with a smile: “It was an enormous scandal, and it became an enormous success. On opening night, I said, ‘Now we are really international.’ People aren’t sleeping at the end.” |