Enescu, George

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares99 Views

    Enescu, an Underplayed Composer, Is Still a Star in Romania

    by

    The pandemic could not derail the sprawling George Enescu International Festival in Bucharest.BUCHAREST, Romania — Romania has a long record of defying the catastrophes history has served up, so it certainly would not allow the pandemic to derail the George Enescu International Festival, devoted to its premier musical native son, which ended on Sunday. At stake was not only the 25th edition of this country’s largest cultural event, but also the renewal of a global artistic exchange that this still-marginalized part of Europe considers essential to its development.Stubbornly underappreciated elsewhere, Enescu (1881-1955), whose “Oedipe” runs at the Paris Opera through Oct. 14, remains a pervasive presence here, even beyond the musical realm. His face is on Romania’s five-lei note; Bucharest’s largest orchestra is the George Enescu Philharmonic. A sumptuous Beaux-Arts palace along the fabled Calea Victoriei that served briefly as his home is now the Enescu Museum and the headquarters for the Romanian Composers Union.Credited with giving Romanians a national voice inspired by the country’s rich folk music, Enescu also had a fully cosmopolitan outlook that embraced multiple stylistic shifts. He embodied an ideal of the complete musician in his roles as composer, virtuoso violinist and pianist, conductor, teacher and generous mentor to younger artists. Yehudi Menuhin praised him as “the most extraordinary human being, the greatest musician and the most formative influence I have ever experienced.”George Enescu, who is stubbornly underappreciated elsewhere but well represented in his home country.History and Art Collection/AlamyEven as the continuing pandemic dashed hopes for a return to more normal life, an astonishing roster of 32 orchestras from 14 countries managed to travel here for the festival, among the most extensive classical music events in the world. Scheduled every two years, it runs in alternation with the George Enescu International Competition for young performers and composers. The festival started in 1958, three years after Enescu’s death, and was initially presented every three years. But an attitude from the Communist government that could be described as ambivalent at best turned downright hostile and self-destructive during the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. Much had to be rebuilt following the revolution of 1989.The festival lasts four weeks, with multiple events each day. A major focus is the lineup of top international ensembles, many of which are asked to include a work by Enescu in their touring repertoire. The ticketed events take place in four concert venues in the center of Bucharest, but seven other cities around Romania also present concerts under the festival’s auspices.The conductor Vladimir Jurowski, who concludes his tenure as the festival’s artistic director with this edition, emphasized in an interview the strategic importance of having visiting orchestras commit to a work by Enescu. Many of them will go on to perform these when they return home, he said, “further widening the appreciation and visibility” of the Romanian composer.Jurowski, whose tenure as the festival’s artistic director comes to an end this year.Alex Damian“I have been especially proud of bringing Enescu’s work to London and Berlin and Moscow with my own orchestras over the years,” he added, including a concert version of “Oedipe,” Enescu’s only opera.Luring audiences to Bucharest, however, continues to vex festival organizers. “Everybody has a false image about Romania,” said Mihai Constantinescu, the event’s executive director since 1991, when asked why the mammoth undertaking isn’t on the radar of many abroad.“But the moment they arrive here,” Constantinescu added,” they are amazed.”The violinist Leonidas Kavakos, a longtime regular, spoke of the intensity of the audience’s appreciation: “They remain very quiet, very receptive. You feel the thirst for music and for interacting, and that is something that is vital for anybody who goes onstage.”The violinist Leonidas Kavakos, who appeared in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto.Andrei GindacWhen Kavakos joined the Munich Philharmonic for the first of that orchestra’s two concerts under Valery Gergiev, he seemed to astonish himself with the sheer sonic pleasure of tracing Tchaikovsky’s continually repeated melodies in the Violin Concerto in as pure and unindulgent a manner as possible. The wildly unpredictable Gergiev was more engaged than in recent memory, presiding over a magnificently shaped version of Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony, an unusual and memorable pairing with the Tchaikovsky concerto.Enescu, the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja said, “is a universe for himself,” adding, “I find it remarkable how he discovered his language.” She is another festival regular, and at this edition introduced Valentin Doni’s orchestrated version of one of Enescu’s most fascinating and challenging chamber pieces, the Sonata No. 3 for violin and piano (“Dans le Caractère Populaire Roumain”).The violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, whose appearances included as a soloist with the Moldova Philharmonic Orchestra under Adrian Petrescu.Catalina FilipDespite her vivid stage presence and the valiant efforts of Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the concept felt doomed from the start by the impossibility of balancing the forces; the orchestrated piano part kept distracting from Kopatchinskaja. But an experiment that didn’t work served to underscore the festival’s openness to exploring new facets of Enescu and his work.It was a sign of the respect the festival receives in musical circles that Gardner chose it as the occasion for his first public performance since officially taking the reins of the London Philharmonic. Their two programs were part of a deliberate emphasis on British orchestras in this festival edition as a post-Brexit statement of musical solidarity. Six of the seven London-based ensembles initially invited were able to work around the stringent quarantine protocols and perform in Bucharest.“It’s a beautiful requirement that the festival has for us to include a piece by Enescu,” Gardner said. The program framed the sonata orchestration with Michael Tippett’s Ritual Dances from “The Midsummer Marriage” and a colorful, high-contrast account of Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.” The next evening, Gardner proved to be a natural storyteller with a thrilling and theatrically paced rendition of Sibelius’s Second Symphony.However much Enescu has been lionized here, aspects of his legacy continue to be reappraised or even rediscovered by Romanians. The pianist Angela Draghicescu garnered media interest around the country for introducing to the festival the long-forgotten Piano Trio No. 1, from 1897, which she performed with colleagues from the Berlin Philharmonic.Draghicescu gave the trio its belated American premiere in 2019 and has become an authority on the enigmatic history of this precocious, Brahms-besotted score, written by Enescu when he was 16 and first discovered as a student in Paris.“It’s still unknown,” she says, “and only now, after the U.S. premiere, has it started to gain an international reputation.”A surprising number of works also received their belated Romanian premieres. One of these was Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1920 opera “Die Tote Stadt,” performed by the Enescu Philharmonic in a concert version infused with loving detail by the conductor Frédéric Chaslin. In the opera’s final moments, the central character recognizes the futility of his desire to arrest time and loss. The score’s radiant resolution settled like a benediction across the vast space of the Sala Palatului, a former congress hall for the Romanian Communist Party whose exterior still bears the scars of bullets from the 1989 revolution.Constantinescu has guided the festival since shortly after that traumatizing transition, but, along with Jurowski, he has announced his intention to depart following this 25th edition. The sought-after Romanian conductor Cristian Macelaru has been rumored to succeed him. Or was it just coincidence that toward the end of the festival, the announcement came that Macelaru had committed to record Enescu’s complete orchestral oeuvre with the Orchestra de France for Deutsche Grammophon? More

    More stories

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Oedipus Takes to the Stages in Berlin

      by

      Four interpretations of the Greek myth have been produced in the German capital, all with resonances for our moment.BERLIN — “The city reeks with death in her streets,” the chorus laments in Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex.” Thebes is in the grip of a deadly plague. The king summons a prophet to divine the will of the gods, who accuses the monarch, “You are the cursed polluter of this land.”The theme of nature striking back, revolting against unnatural acts, is one that resonates 20 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and after a summer of climate-change-related extreme weather events, including flooding in Germany, deadly heat waves in Canada and fires in Greece.All that may help explain why, at the beginning of the theater season in Berlin, Sophocles’ tragic hero, the original mama’s boy, has been center stage in a quartet of new productions at some of the city’s leading companies.Arguably the most eagerly awaited was Maja Zade’s new play, “ödipus,” a contemporary reworking of the myth, which premiered at the Athens Epidaurus Festival this month and recently transferred to the Schaubühne. Michael, a young employee at a German chemical company, is dating his much older boss, Christina. Their relationship begins to fray over the handling of an investigation into a chemical spill, and Michael learns that the accident also caused the death of Christina’s first husband. Several revelations later, Michael puts two and two together and realizes that — spoiler alert — he killed his father and slept with his mother.The Kazakh director Evgeny Titov’s surreal production of “Œdipe” is far and away the most brutal of Berlin’s Oedipal offerings.Monika RittershausAny hint of ancient Greek cosmology is scrubbed clean from Zade’s version. The most explicit reference we get to myth in Thomas Ostermeier’s sleek and sterile production is a small statue of a sphinx perched on a kitchen counter. Jan Pappelbaum’s sparse set, framed by neon lights, has a sitcom-like realism. The dialogue, dispatched by the four-person cast around the kitchen table or a backyard grill, is stiff and largely functional. The actors struggle more against a poorly made play than they do against fate.The only one who succeeds is Caroline Peters as Christina, who, even more than her young lover, is the center of Zade’s play. Peters shows her talent for transcending mediocre dramatic material just as she did in the recent Schaubühne production of Simon Stone’s “Yerma.” At the climax of the production, she explains the awful truth to Michael. Her face is projected in close-up on a screen (the only time that the intermittent video serves a purpose), allowing us to register her every twitch during the lengthy speech. She pulls off the tricky monologue like a doctor steeling herself to give a patient a terrible diagnosis, putting aside her bedside manner because there’s no way to sugarcoat a revelation this horrific.Along with the gods and fate, Zade’s play also dispenses with the chorus, a mainstay of Greek drama, who provide a collective counterpoint to the individuals at the center of the drama. Chanting in unison, they also fill in background information and comment on the action, serving as something of a conduit between the main actors and the audience.This chorus, on the other hand, assumes center stage in the Deutsches Theater’s highly ritualistic “Oedipus,” a largely faithful production of Sophocles’ play directed by Ulrich Rasche. The contrast in tone and style with the down-to-earth realism of Ostermeier’s production could not be more striking.Rasche has devised an extremely precise mode of Maschinentheater, a theatrical approach that relies heavily on elaborate scenic elements and stagecraft. His industrial and dark productions derive much of their sweaty vitality from intense physical performances and droning music. His “Oedipus” is based on an 1804 translation by the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin, whose language is archaic and pungently lyrical. The cast, treading in place on a constantly rotating stage, enunciates the text crisply and with studied intensity.The Deutsches Theater’s highly ritualistic “Oedipus,” a largely faithful production of Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” directed by Ulrich Rasche. Arno DeclairNico van Wersch’s score includes an electric bass, Moog synthesizer and microtonal keyboard. The chorus chants in unison, creating a percussive atmosphere that harmonizes with the concentric rings of color-changing fluorescent lights that tilt from the ceiling. The effect is arresting for the first hour, but then quickly turns soporific. Rasche takes his time — just shy of three hours — and the slow-moving production is maddeningly deliberate.Music played an even more prominent role in Berlin’s second pair of Oedipal productions.The British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage was a 20-something upstart in 1988 when he wrote “Greek,” which recently opened the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s season. This short, two-act opera is many things, including a scathing political and social commentary about Thatcher-era England and a self-conscious sendup of opera as an art form that, at its origin, sought to resurrect the spirit of ancient Greek drama.A spunky and potty-mouthed comic strip opera, “Greek” transposes the action from ancient Thebes to East London. Oedipus becomes Eddy, an angry young working-class man looking to better himself while fleeing a horrible fate predicted by a carnival fortune teller that has become a running gag in his family.In the Deutsche Oper’s parking lot (a corona-averse location also used last year for a reduced production of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold”), four singers pranced and strutted in the young German director Pinar Karabulut’s cartoonishly campy production, wearing colorful variations on ancient Greek garb, down to orange, purple and green curly wigs and beards. There’s a fair amount of spoken text, which the members of the all-American cast dispatched with exaggerated cockney accents when they weren’t belting out the eclectic score, which careens from dance hall crudeness to poignant lyricism.Dean Murphy in the British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage’s “Greek,” staged in the parking lot of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Eike WalkenhorstTurnage’s irreverent work is one of the more recent musical versions of the Oedipus myth, a list that includes Stravinsky’s 1927 “Oedipus Rex” and the Doors’ “The End.” Among the most powerful is George Enescu’s 1936 opera, “Œdipe,” an underperformed 20th-century masterpiece that recently opened the Komische Oper Berlin’s season. (In a rare coincidence, a new production of the opera also kicked off the season at the Paris Opera.)The Kazakh director Evgeny Titov’s surreal production is far and away the most brutal of Berlin’s Oedipal offerings. The set resembles a derelict madhouse and is frequently awash in blood, from the tragic hero’s difficult birth to his transfiguring death in Colonus. In between are graphic depictions of Laius’ disembowelment and of Oedipus putting out his own eyes.Enescu’s musical language fuses various early modernist styles with traditional Romanian melodies and harmonies, which the orchestra of the Komische Oper, under the baton of its general music director, Ainars Rubikis, performs with assurance and intensity. The lengthy title role features ample Sprechgesang, a vocal style halfway between song and speech. The British baritone Leigh Melrose’s searing performance is as much a dramatic feat as it is a musical achievement. Of all the Oedipuses haunting the German capital, his is the most affecting, tragic and believable.Enescu began writing “Œdipe” shortly after Sigmund Freud first theorized the Oedipus complex, and the composer’s Oedipus is an archetype of modern man who, despite his quest for knowledge and self-understanding, is blind to himself, incapable of outrunning destiny and the agent of his own destruction.Is it any wonder that some of today’s leading theatermakers have turned to this 2,500-year-old existential detective story as we grapple with the catastrophes affecting our bodies and our planet? Like the ancients, we get the myths we deserve, not the ones we want.From left, Renato Schuch, Caroline Peters and Christian Tschirner in “ödipus,” by Maja Zade, directed by Thomas Ostermeier at the Schaubühne Berlin.Gianmarco Bresadolaödipus. Directed by Thomas Ostermeier. Schaubühne Berlin, through Sept. 26.Œdipe. Directed by Evgeny Titov. Komische Oper Berlin, through Sept. 26.Oedipus. Directed by Ulrich Rasche. Deutsches Theater Berlin, through Oct. 17. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Avec 'Oedipe', Wajdi Mouawad sonde les fractures du passé

      by

      Pour sa mise en scène l’opéra de Georges Enescu, le libano-canadien Wajdi Mouawad sonde les traumatismes de la compagnie — et les siens. “Quand on est soi-même complètement fracturé, on construit”.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.PARIS — Peu avant le début des répétitions pour sa mise en scène de l’“Œdipe” d’Enesco à l’Opéra de Paris, Wajdi Mouawad a une idée qui s’avère insolite. Il rédige un lexique de toutes les références obscures du livret — comme “l’eau de Castalie”, une source sacrée de Delphes — et l’envoie au chœur.Wajdi Mouawad, qui a 52 ans et dirige le Théâtre national de la Colline à Paris, est alors stupéfait d’apprendre que c’est la première fois que les choristes reçoivent un tel document. Quand il rencontre les techniciens de l’Opéra pour leur expliquer l’histoire de cet “Œdipe”, une curiosité composée dans les années 30 qui s’inspire du mythe grec, leur réaction est la même, se souvient-il dans un entretien: les metteurs en scène prennent rarement la peine de leur accorder beaucoup d’attention.“C’est étrange, parce qu’on me dit : ‘c’est formidable, tu dis bonjour’, ” confirme-t-il. “J’ai l’impression d’arriver dans un monde traumatisé qui maintenant trouve que son traumatisme est la normalité.”Traumatisme : le mot pourrait résumer ces dernières années à l’Opéra de Paris,volontiers frondeur. Fin 2019 et début 2020, les grèves provoquées par la perspective d’une réforme des retraites ont creusé un déficit de 45 millions d’euros, sur un budget de près de 230 millions d’euros. Et encore, c’était avant que la pandémie n’oblige à annuler plus d’une année de productions. (Des spectacles ont eu lieu en septembre et en octobre de l’année dernière, mais la compagnie a dû attendre fin mai pour reprendre sa programmation régulière.)L’“Œdipe” qui débute lundi à l’Opéra Bastille, la plus vaste scène de la compagnie, inaugure une nouvelle ère. Il s’agit de la première production commandée par Alexander Neef, le nouveau directeur général de l’Opéra de Paris nommé il y a un an.Le choix de Wajdi Mouawad ne doit rien au hasard. Avant d’arriver à Paris, Neef a dirigeait la Compagnie nationale d’opéra de Toronto où il a co-produit les premiers pas de Mouawad dans l’univers de l’opéra. C’était “L’Enlèvement au sérail” de Mozart, en 2016, qu’Alexander Neef qualifie d’ “une des expériences les plus gratifiantes que j’aie connue avec un metteur en scène.”“Sa force en tant qu’artiste, c’est qu’il a vraiment à cœur de travailler avec les gens,” explique Alexander Neef lors d’un entretien dans son bureau. “Avec “Œdipe”, j’espérais qu’il arrive à ressouder la compagnie. Il faut presque lui demander de ne pas être trop gentil.”Le retour d’ “Œdipe” sur la scène parisienne s’est fait attendre. Unique opéra de Georges Enesco, l’œuvre a été créée en 1936 au Palais Garnier. Elle n’a jamais été reprise à l’Opéra de Paris depuis cette date, alors que d’autres compagnies d’opéra s’y sont récemment intéressées. La première production nord-américaine a eu lieu en 2005 à l’université d’Illinois. En Europe, Achim Freyer a offert une mise en scène applaudie au Festival de Salzbourg il y a deux ans, sous la baguette d’Ingo Metzmacher que l’on retrouve à Paris.Wajdi Mouawad, au centre, lors d’une répétition d’ “Oedipe” à l’Opéra de Paris.Eléna Bauer/Opéra national de ParisPlus que la qualité de l’oeuvre, Alexander Neef pense que ce sont les accidents de l’histoire qui expliquent le manque d’intérêt pour cet “Œdipe” en dépit de critiques élogieuses au moment de sa création. En 1936, le New York Times rapportait les propos du compositeur et critique français Reynaldo Hahn évoquant une œuvre “grandiose, élevée, minutieusement élaborée, toujours imposante et qui force l’admiration.”“Après 1945, sa musique est passée de mode,” avance Alexander Neef à propos de la partition d’Enesco. “Pour beaucoup de compositeurs après l’Holocauste, la musique tonale n’avait plus lieu d’être.”Quand Alexandre Neef lui a proposé le projet, Wajdi Mouawad s’est avant tout intéressé au livret. Le metteur en scène a beaucoup fréquenté la légende d’Œdipe: en trente ans de carrière, il a monté l’ “Œdipe roi” de Sophocle trois fois. Et en 2016, il a même écrit une pièce intitulée “Les Larmes d’Œdipe”, qui relie la tragédie à la situation politique actuelle de la Grèce.Edmond Fleg, le librettiste d’ “Œdipe”, a largement puisé dans “Œdipe roi” et “Œdipe à Colonne”, du même Sophocle, pour les troisième et quatrième actes de l’opéra. (Le premier et le deuxième explicitent le contexte de la pièce.) “C’est un peu résumé, mais ce sont les mêmes répliques,” confirme Wajdi Mouawad. “Je me suis dit que j’avais de la place pour raconter cette histoire.”Composer des histoires est une priorité de toujours pour Wajdi Mouawad, qui est né au Liban en 1968. Sa famille a fui la guerre civile quand il avait dix ans, s’installant d’abord en France puis au Québec.“Quand j’essayais de comprendre la guerre du Liban, soit on me disait qu’il n’y avait rien à comprendre, soit on me disait : ‘c’est à cause des autres’,” se souvient-il. “Je manque tellement de récits.”Après une formation d’acteur à l’École nationale de théâtre du Canada à Montréal, Wajdi Mouawad se fait remarquer avec une tétralogie épique intitulée “Le Sang des promesses”, qui fait le tour du monde. Composée de quatre volets, “Littoral” (1999), “Incendies” (2003), “Forêts” (2006) et “Ciels” (2009), la pièce joue sur les thèmes du traumatisme intergénérationnel, de la guerre et de l’exil.Son travail a fait découvrir le théâtre contemporain à nombre de milléniaux francophones. À son retour à Paris en 2016, à la direction du théâtre de la Colline, Wajdi Mouawad se démarque du goût européen actuel pour les productions non linéaires et très conceptuelles. Lisa Perrio, une actrice qui a travaillé plusieurs fois sous sa direction, le confirme : “Il aime le dramatique, le pathos, et ça marche.”“C’est la chose la plus dure de ma vie que j’aie eu à jouer,” ajoute-t-elle, “parce que ça te demande tellement d’émotion.”Pour Wajdi Mouawad, le postmodernisme est un luxe incompatibe avec certains traumatismes. “Je suis le post-modernisme,” dit-il. “La guerre du Liban, il n’y a pas plus post-moderne. La déconstruction, c’est un truc de riches. Quand tout va bien, on déconstruit. Quand on n’a pas les moyens – quand on est soi-même complètement fracturé – on construit.”“Quand tout va bien, on déconstruit,” dit Wajdi Mouawad. “Quand on n’a pas les moyens – quand on est soi-même complètement fracturé – on construit.”Julien Mignot pour The New York TimesEn mars, un an après le début des perturbations causées par la pandémie, la Colline est un des premiers théâtres français à être occupé par des manifestants. Les étudiants et les travailleurs de la culture exigeaient le soutien du gouvernement et le retrait de la réforme de l’assurance-chômage. Très vite, le mouvement s’est étendu à plus de cent théâtres.Contacté par téléphone, Sébastien Kheroufi, un des premiers élèves-comédiens à s’être installé à la Colline, dit que Wajdi Mouawad est un des rares metteurs en scène de renom à avoir réservé un accueil chaleureux aux occupants . “Un soir, il n’a pas hésité à rester avec nous plusieurs heures après ses répétitions parce qu’on avait besoin de parler,” se souvient-il.La levée de l’occupation fin mai reste toutefois une source de frustration pour Wajdi Mouawad. Avec son équipe, il a proposé aux étudiants de rester pour la réouverture et de prendre la parole avant les spectacles. Wajdi Mouawad espérait aussi créer une troupe permanente de jeunes comédiens à qui il offrirait des contrats à l’année.Christopher Maltman, center, in a rehearsal of “Oedipe” at the Paris Opera.Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de ParisIls ont fini par refuser “parce que l’idée venait de nous et qu’ils ne voulaient rien nous devoir,” juge-t-il aujourd’hui. Un coup dur pour cet homme qui a horreur de la hiérarchie et n’a pas hésité à rédiger une lettre ouverte dépitée dans laquelle il revient sur l’ “échec” de toutes les parties engagées dans l’occupation.Puis, début septembre, au beau milieu des répétitions d’ “Œdipe”, François Ismert, son dramaturge de longue date, est décédé. “C’était vraiment quelqu’un de solaire, d’atypique,” dit ce dernier. Ismert l’avait ouvert à Sophocle dans les années 1990, “et pas que”, se souvient-il. “À tout le reste, sans jamais être dans un rapport paternaliste.”À l’approche de la première, cette disparition continue de se faire sentir. Mais le metteur en scène tâche de donner un sens au chaos.“Je sais que tout est en ruines,” soupire-t-il avant de rejoindre le studio de répétition. “Mais il faut bien en faire quelque chose, de ces ruines.” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      With a Rare ‘Oedipe,’ the Paris Opera Pulls Together

      by

      Staged by the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad, Enescu’s opera helps inaugurate a new era for the storied company.PARIS — Ahead of rehearsals for his staging of George Enescu’s “Oedipe” at the Paris Opera, the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad did something unusual. He put together a glossary of all the obscure references in the libretto — like “the water of Castalia,” a sacred spring in Delphi — and sent it to the chorus.Mouawad, 52, who runs the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris, was taken aback to find the choristers had never received anything like it. When he approached the company’s technical crew to explain to them the story of “Oedipe,” a rarity from the 1930s based on the Greek myth, their reaction was similar, he said in an interview — few directors ever bothered to pay them much mind.“It’s odd, because I hear, ‘It’s wonderful, you say hello,”” Mouawad added. “I feel like I’m stepping into a traumatized world that now believes its trauma is the norm.”Trauma is not a bad way of describing the past few years at the fractious Paris Opera. In late 2019 and early 2020, labor strikes over a pension policy overhaul resulted in a 45 million euro deficit in a budget hovering around 230 million euros. And that was before the pandemic forced the cancellation of over a year’s worth of performances. (While some performances took place in September and October last year, the company didn’t resume its regular schedule until late May.)So “Oedipe,” which opens at the Opera Bastille, the company’s larger theater, on Monday, may just inaugurate a new era. It is the first production that was commissioned by Alexander Neef, who took over as the Opera’s general director last year.It is no coincidence that he turned to Mouawad. In his last job, leading the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, Neef co-produced Mouawad’s first stab at opera, a 2016 production of Mozart’s “The Abduction From the Seraglio,” that Neef calls “one of the most satisfying experiences that I’ve ever had with a director.”“His strength as an artist is that he really wants to work with humans,” Neef added in an interview in his office. “With ‘Oedipe,’ my hope was that he would pull the whole company together. Sometimes, you almost need to encourage him not to be too nice.”The return of “Oedipe” to the Paris stage has been a long time coming. Enescu’s only opera, it had its premiere at the company’s smaller, ornate Palais Garnier in 1936, but has never been revived there, even as other opera houses took a belated interest in it. The North American premiere took place at the University of Illinois in 2005, while Achim Freyer directed an acclaimed staging at the Salzburg Festival two years ago, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, who will return to the score in Paris.Mouawad, center, during a rehearsal for “Oedipe.”Eléna Bauer/Opéra national de ParisNeef believes the course of history, rather than quality, explains the long lack of appetite for “Oedipe,” which earned positive reviews upon its premiere. The New York Times reported in 1936 that the French composer and critic Reynaldo Hahn had described it as “imposing, lofty, minutely elaborated” and “always compelling admiration.”“After 1945, I think the music had fallen out of fashion,” Neef said of Enescu’s lush score. “For a lot of composers writing after the Holocaust, it couldn’t be tonal music anymore, for a long time.”When Neef first approached him, Mouawad was less concerned with the score than with the libretto. The legend of Oedipus was familiar to him: In his 30-year career, Mouawad has staged Sophocles’s “Oedipus the King” three times. In 2016, he also wrote a play, “The Tears of Oedipus,” that tied the character’s plight to modern Greek politics.The librettist of “Oedipe,” Edmond Fleg, closely based the third and fourth acts on “Oedipus the King” and another play by Sophocles, “Oedipus at Colonus.” (The first and second acts flesh out the plays’ background.) “It’s slightly summarized, but the dialogue is essentially the same,” Mouawad said. “I thought I would have space to tell this story.”Storytelling has long driven Mouawad, who was born in Lebanon in 1968. When he was 10, his family fled the civil war, moving first to France, then to French-speaking Quebec.“When I tried to understand the Lebanese civil war, I was either told that there was nothing to understand, or that it was the fault of others,” Mouawad said. “There was a gaping lack of stories in my life.”After training as an actor at the National Theater School in Montreal, Mouawad rose to prominence with an epic tetralogy, “The Blood of Promises,” that has been produced all over the world. Composed of “Littoral” (1999), “Scorched” (2003), “Forests” (2006) and “Skies” (2009), it delved into intergenerational trauma, war and displacement.His work has served as an introduction to contemporary theater for many French-speaking millennials. Even after he moved back to Paris in 2016 to direct the Théâtre de la Colline, Mouawad steered clear of the prevailing European taste for nonlinear, highly conceptual productions. Lisa Perrio, an actress who has worked with Mouawad several times in recent years, said that “he loves drama, pathos, and it works.”“When everything is fine, you deconstruct,” Mouawad said. “When you can’t afford it — when you yourself are completely fractured — you build.”Julien Mignot for The New York Times“His work is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to perform,” she added, “because it requires so much emotion.”To Mouawad, postmodernism is a luxury beyond the means of those who have experienced deep trauma. “I myself am postmodernism,” he said “There is nothing more postmodern than the Lebanese war. Deconstruction is a rich person’s thing. When everything is fine, you deconstruct. When you can’t afford it — when you yourself are completely fractured — you build.”In March, a year into the disruption caused by the pandemic, the Théâtre de la Colline was one of the first French theaters to be occupied by protesters. Students and arts workers demanded government support and the withdrawal of changes to unemployment benefits. The movement soon spread to over 100 playhouses.Sébastien Kheroufi, who was among the drama students who first entered La Colline, said in a phone interview that Mouawad was one of the few high-profile directors to extend the occupiers a warm welcome. “One night, he even stayed with us for several hours after his rehearsals because we needed to talk,” Kheroufi said.Yet the end of the occupation, in late May, left Mouawad frustrated. He and his team offered the students the opportunity to stay on for the reopening and speak before shows; Mouawad also hoped to start a permanent youth company, offering year-round contracts to young actors.Christopher Maltman, center, plays the title role in “Oedipe.”Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de ParisThey ultimately said no, Mouawad now speculates, “because the idea had come from us, and they didn’t want to owe us anything.” It was a blow for the hierarchy-averse Mouawad, who reflected on the “failure” of all parties of the occupation movement in a despondent open letter.Then, in early September, just as rehearsals for “Oedipe” were in full swing, Mouawad’s longtime dramaturg François Ismert passed away. “He was such a luminous, atypical person,” Mouawad said. Ismert had introduced him to Sophocles in the 1990s — “and not just that,” he said. “To everything else, without ever being paternalistic.”The loss loomed over the approaching premiere. Days before, though, Mouawad remained intent on sifting through the chaos.“I know everything is in ruins,” he said, before returning to the rehearsal room. “But we have to make something of those ruins.” More