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    A Decidedly French “Hamlet” Returns to Paris

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    Starting in March, Ambroise Thomas’s version of the Shakespearean tragedy will be revived at the Opéra Bastille for the first time since 1938.Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet” had all the elements to become a blockbuster at the Paris Opera in the 19th century. With a gripping plot that unfolds over five acts, a leading baritone in the title role and innovative orchestration deploying newly invented instruments, the work had an enduring hold at the box office after its 1868 premiere.Like so many “grands opéras” that were born and bred for the company, “Hamlet” fell out of repertoire around the turn of the 20th century. Only since the 1980s has the work received a revival on stages worldwide. From March 11 to April 9, Thomas’s Shakespearean adaptation will return to the Paris Opera for the first time since 1938, in a new production directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski and starring Ludovic Tézier at the Opéra Bastille (a pre-opening for viewers under 28 takes place on March 8. Thomas Hengelbrock conducts).The company’s general director, Alexander Neef, has made it a goal to create a more specific identity for the Paris Opera by commissioning research and programming the French grand opera that once flourished there. Having experienced and admired a production of “Hamlet” at the Metropolitan Opera some 20 years ago, Mr. Neef said that the work “came up rather naturally” after his appointment.Mr. Tézier, whom he considers “not only the leading French baritone but maybe the leading baritone in his repertoire,” was also a natural choice. The singer, who is particularly coveted in the music of Verdi, in turn suggested Mr. Warlikowski as director following their collaboration on a 2017 production of Verdi’s “Don Carlos” at Opéra Bastille.For both lead performer and director, the production provides an opportunity to deepen their interpretation of a work that has played an important role in their respective careers. Mr. Tézier made debuts in both Toulouse, France, and Turin, Italy, in the title of role of Thomas’s “Hamlet” about two decades ago, while Mr. Warlikowski staged the original play by Shakespeare in Avignon, France in 2000 (he had first learned the drama as an apprentice of the late director Peter Brook in Paris).The director Krzysztof Warlikowski, who staged the original play by Shakespeare in 2000 in Avignon, France. “For me, the essential thing that clinches the drama is of course the apparition of the specter,” he said.Louisa Marie Summer for The New York TimesThis operatic version of “Hamlet” takes an unexpected turn before the curtain falls: The protagonist survives and is crowned king. The liberties taken by Thomas’s librettists, Michel Carré and Jules Barbier, met with criticism after the premiere; a Covent Garden version of the opera first mounted in 1869 restores the work’s original, more tragic ending.For Mr. Warlikowski, Thomas’s protagonist shares a great deal in common with the mythological figure of Orestes. “He also rebels against hypocrisy and the ills of this world,” he explained on a video call.The director will also hone in on the scenes in which the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears. “For me, the essential thing that clinches the drama is of course the apparition of the specter,” he said.Mr. Tézier noted that Thomas deployed some of his most dramatically effective music for the ghost by knowing how to pare down the orchestra. The baritone drew a parallel to another Shakespearean opera, Verdi’s “Macbeth,” and the title character’s hallucination of a dagger.“Thomas creates an atmosphere that is favorable to the text and the emotion of the moment,” he said by phone.The composer was exploring orchestral colors with new instruments by the musician and inventor Adolphe Sax at the same time as the composer Hector Berlioz, who held Thomas in great esteem. For example, the second-act banquet scene in which Hamlet accuses Claudius of murdering his father features a solo for alto saxophone. Thomas also wrote for bass saxhorn and six-keyed trombones.An ardent defender of French music against Germanic influence (specifically that of Wagner), Thomas in 1877 stated that every country “should stay faithful to its style and maintain its distinct character,” rather than submit “to the caprices of the time.” In a sign of his patriotism, he volunteered for the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War before assuming the directorship of the Paris Conservatory in 1871.His “Hamlet” has been noted for its specifically French qualities. In addition to mitigating tragedy by allowing the protagonist to survive and avenge the death of his father, romantic intrigue and sensuous instrumentation often set the tone.Ludovic Tézier has a long history with Thomas’s “Hamlet,” having made debuts in Toulouse, France, and Turin, Italy in the title role. He noted that the work “allows the audience to spend a night in the opera in a state of suspense and meditation.”Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesParis was at the time the center of classical musical life, not just in Europe but worldwide. “Hamlet” premiered at Salle Le Peletier, the same theater that mounted such works as Giacomo Meyerbeer’s “Robert le Diable” and Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” before Palais Garnier opened in 1875.The baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure, who was at the height of his fame, was captured in portrait as Hamlet by none other than Manet. The role of Ophélie, whose fourth-act mad scene helped ensure the work’s popularity, has also been an important role for sopranos from Christina Nilsson to Mary Garden (the new production stars Lisette Oropesa and, starting in April, Brenda Rae).But by 1891, Wagner’s “music of the future” became something of a game changer. “Lohengrin,” “Die Walküre” and “Tannhäuser” remained in repertoire at the Paris Opera through 1910, while of Meyerbeer’s four major operas, only “Les Huguenots” persisted.Mr. Warlikowski expressed his wish to champion “Hamlet” by “provoking questions and creating a spiritual journey through this timeless story.”Mr. Tézier emphasized that the work was not “second-rate.”“It most of all allows the audience to spend a night in the opera in a state of suspense and meditation,” he said.He compared the infrequent programming of such neglected classics to the unpredictable sightings of the Loch Ness monster: “There is no real explanation. But with each appearance of the monster, you have to see it because it’s a rarity. From the beginning to the end, something really happens in the music.” More

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      Paris Opera Director Alexander Neef Broadens Its Repertory

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      Alexander Neef plans an innovative approach to keep audiences happy, even as he works to stem financial losses.To have taken over as director of the Paris Opera one year earlier than planned, just as the longest strike in the company’s history was morphing into the worst global pandemic in a century, might reasonably have rattled Alexander Neef.But if it did, he doesn’t show it. This German impresario, who dresses with elegance and speaks with care, is not, shall we say, operatic in his manner.In fact, even at the suggestion that he was offered a poisoned chalice when he took over in 2020, Mr. Neef, 48, did not take the bait. “It hasn’t been a bad ride,” he said in a video interview. “In the end, you accept and then you assume.”One reason that he was perhaps not unnerved by the challenge was that he had already worked at the Paris Opera, as casting director for the director Gerard Mortier from 2004 to 2008. “A lot of the staff was there when I was last there, and people had some kind of idea who they were dealing with,” he noted.But another reason was that, faced with the cancellation of hundreds of performances, the French government stepped in with an enormous package of emergency aid worth 86 million euros, or nearly $95 million. And it was no small asset that Mr. Neef was chosen for the job by President Emmanuel Macron himself. “A lot of my colleagues who were appointed by him feel that there is an investment in our success,” Mr. Neef said.Mr. Neef attending the inaugural concert by Paris Opera’s music director, Gustavo Dudamel, at the Palais Garnier in September.Pascal Le Segretain/Getty ImagesStill, when it comes to opera managers, there is no consensus on how to measure success. Are they applauded for using their fund-raising skills to help balance the books? Are they remembered for putting on large productions featuring star performers with little concern for the cost? Clearly audiences are more interested in what takes place onstage than in the vagaries of opera house budgets, but just as clearly, they are related.For the public, then, the least exciting aspect of Mr. Neef’s strategy is to stem the Paris Opera’s losses by the 2024-25 season, by which time emergency government support will probably no longer be provided. With this in mind, and with about 250 of the 1,500 members of the company’s staff expected to retire by 2025, he said he hoped not to have to replace them all, thereby saving 50 to 100 salaries.But how its limited resources are used also serves to determine an opera house’s standing. And here again, Mr. Neef has some innovative, albeit simple, ideas. For instance, he prefers not to have the Paris Opera’s two large theaters — the Palais Garnier and the Bastille Opera — resemble “permanent festivals,” with splashy productions that are never revived.“Every one of my predecessors produced a new ‘La Traviata,’ which is rather unusual because that means a new ‘La Traviata’ every five years,” he said. “I think the strategy is that we create a ‘La Traviata’ we can keep for a longer period, and in that case we can create many other things that are not in our repertory.“Now we’re rehearsing Massenet’s ‘Cendrillon,’ which has never been in the Paris Opera repertory,” he went on, “or we’re doing Bernstein’s ‘A Quiet Place’ for the very first time. It’s not about being cautious, it’s about broadening the repertory and not investing in a production that you do once and never again.”That approach was apparent this season, Mr. Neef’s first, which ends in July, and in the 2022-23 season, which he announced this week. It also embraces an interesting change in emphasis wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic.“Over the past few decades,” he said, “there has been a transfer of power from the institution to the audience, which has been reinforced by the pandemic. I think audiences have a much larger awareness today that we need them. We need them as ticket-buyers, as donors and as citizens who are convinced that an organization like the Paris Opera has a role to play.”But pleasing audiences is no easy task. “I always say that we have 2,700 seats at the Bastille and we have 2,700 audiences every night,” he said, adding that what counts is how people interact with the production. “I think indifference is our biggest enemy, because when people are bored at the opera or they don’t really know why they came, that is way more dangerous than a strong negative reaction.”As it happens, experience shows that Paris audiences quite often heckle directors and designers, while the reaction to lead singers can go from polite applause to wild, cheering enthusiasm. And the talent of the singers seems to count more than their fame, which is no doubt lucky because, as Mr. Neef noted, “it’s not what it used to be 20 years ago when you could literally rely on certain names to fill the theater.”Anna Netrebko as Donna Leonora in “La Forza del Destino” in London in 2019. She is scheduled to sing the role next season in Paris.Bill CooperOne name that has traditionally sold tickets is that of the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko, who has been excluded from the Metropolitan Opera of New York for two seasons for not repudiating President Vladimir V. Putin following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the published 2022-23 season of the Paris Opera, however, Ms. Netrebko is still down to sing the role of Donna Leonora in “La Forza del Destino” in December.“We printed the program before the invasion, and we’ll evaluate the situation between now and November to see if it’s possible for her to appear or not,” Mr. Neef said. “It’s a tricky situation. It’s not the government’s position, and it’s certainly not my personal position now, to go to all or certain Russian artists and say, if you don’t publicly denounce the situation, we cannot work with you.”As it happens, a production of Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” with a largely Russian-speaking cast ended its Paris run six days before the invasion, while lead singers in a production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” with performances during the first three weeks of the war in Ukraine, included two Russians, one Ukrainian, one Belarusian and one Romanian. “I think most of them felt they didn’t know exactly what was going on and they’d like to be invisible,” Mr. Neef said.Mr. Neef has a five-year appointment as director of the Paris Opera with the possibility of a second similar term, so any discussion of his legacy is wildly premature. But it could include an initiative he is planning for next season: Taking his inspiration from many German opera houses, he plans to create a troupe of 15 to 20 professional singers who will be on salary (and not work as freelancers, as most soloists do) and will take on all but the biggest roles.Mr. Neef said he believed that greater job stability had become more appealing to cast members over the past two years. “There’s a lot of interest in being resident in one city,” he said, “either because you have a family, or the attraction of going to a new city every few weeks is not as high as it used to be.”So, just as some lead dancers in the Paris Opera Ballet Company have fan clubs, it may not be long before once-unknown members of the new troupe have an ardent following of their own. More

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      Paris Opera Plans New Productions of Strauss and Britten

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      Human complexities to take center stage in new productions of classics, including works by Strauss and Britten.PARIS — There is never anything very normal about opera. After all, no other art form demands such extreme suspension of disbelief. But after the disruptions caused by strikes and the Covid-19 pandemic, normality is the cherished goal of the Paris Opera as it unveiled its program for the 2022-23 season this week.“An unwelcome guest in our lives, the pandemic has reminded us just how ephemeral and fragile all life is,” Alexander Neef, the opera company’s director, wrote in a news release introducing the season. “Yet by upsetting time and our certainties, it has made the same life more valuable.”Quoting Falstaff in Verdi’s eponymous opera, “tutto nel mondo è burla” (“all the world is a farce”), he added: “I know of no better antidote to instability than to embrace life. And what better way to do so, at the opera, than by bringing meaning and poetry.”One delight of opera is that a poetic libretto penned a century or more ago can assume fresh meaning with each new production: Audiences know the story line but not how it will be interpreted.The baritone Ludovic Tézier at a classical music awards ceremony last year in Lyon, France. He is to perform as the Danish prince in Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet.”Jeff Pachoud/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor the upcoming season, which opens Sept. 3 with a reprise of Pierre Audi’s production of “Tosca,” Mr. Neef has scheduled a rich array of operas, including new productions of Richard Strauss’s “Salomé,” with the South African soprano Elza van den Heever in the title role; Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes,” with Deborah Warner making her Paris Opera debut as a director; and Ambroise Thomas’s “Hamlet,” with the French baritone Ludovic Tézier as the Danish prince.In a new production of Charles Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette,” France’s new favorite tenor, Benjamin Bernheim, will share the role of Roméo with Francesco Demuro, while Elsa Dreisig and Pretty Yende will alternate as Juliette. This opera, scheduled for next summer, will offer an interesting contrast to “I Capuleti e I Montechhi,” Bellini’s version of the same story, albeit borrowed from a different source, which is to be presented this fall.The Bellini opera is just one of three next season to be directed by the Canadian Robert Carsen. His acclaimed production of “Die Zauberflöte” will return in September, with the powerful German bass René Pape sharing the role of Sarastro with Brindley Sherratt and Ms. Yende alternating with Christiane Karg as Pamina. Mr. Carsen, whose celebrated 1999 Paris Opera production of Handel’s “Alcina” returned here during the current season, will now also direct the same composer’s “Ariodante.”One production the Bastille Opera revives with some regularity is Peter Sellars’s celebrated version of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” much of which is set against the backdrop of a powerful video by Bill Viola, with his trademark images of water, fire and nakedness. With Gustavo Dudamel, the Paris Opera’s new music director, conducting, Mary Elizabeth Williams will be Isolde to Gwyn Hughes Jones’s Tristan.Renée Fleming is scheduled to sing the role of Pat Nixon in a new production by Valentina Carrasco of John Adams’s “Nixon in China.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe season will also note two anniversaries. This year’s 50th anniversary of President Nixon’s bridge-building trip to Beijing will be recalled in a new production by Valentina Carrasco of John Adams’s “Nixon in China,” with Thomas Hampson as the American leader and Renée Fleming as his wife, Pat.The other production, “The Dante Project,” which premiered in London last October, is a ballet by Wayne McGregor to a score by the contemporary opera composer Thomas Adès. It is inspired by last year’s 700th anniversary of the death of Dante, the poet-author of the “Divine Comedy,.”Just as Puccini will be present with “La Bohème” as well as “Tosca,” Verdi is no less a must in every opera season, here represented by two revivals. “La Forza del Destino” is an austere production by Jean-Claude Auvray, with Anna Netrebko and Anna Pirozzi sharing the role of Donna Leonora, Russell Thomas as her lover Don Alvaro and Mr. Tézier as her vengeful brother Don Carlo di Vargas. The second, “Il Trovatore,” another stirring tragedy, returns in a production set around World War I by Àlex Ollé of the Catalan company La Fura dels Baus.The furious pace of 24/7 news today certainly tests directors hoping to give a current edge to operas composed decades or centuries ago. But for Mr. Neef, when productions are inspired by the works of great authors, from Shakespeare to Oscar Wilde, there is something unchanging in the way they “all delve into human complexities, the subtleties of consciousness and the tensions between the sexes and generations.” More

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      Gustavo Dudamel, Superstar Conductor, Will Lead Paris Opera

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      In a coup, the venerable company has hired as its next music director the rare classical artist to have crossed into pop-culture celebrity.When Alexander Neef was named the next director of the mighty Paris Opera in 2019, he did not have a particular candidate in mind to succeed the company’s music director, who was leaving after a decade. “I felt I should consult with the musicians,” Neef said by phone recently, “and see who for them, what for them, how for them the future looked like.”One surprising name kept coming up in those conversations: the superstar conductor Gustavo Dudamel, the musical leader of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since 2009 and the rare classical artist to have crossed into pop-culture celebrity.He had made his Paris debut in 2017, with “La Bohème,” and hit it off. “I felt this connection with the house, the musicians, the choir, with the whole team,” Dudamel recalled in an interview on Thursday at the company’s ornate Palais Garnier theater. “I was here for one month and a half and I was feeling like I was at home.”Yet it still seemed an unlikely marriage, given Dudamel’s packed schedule and the fact that, even if that “Bohème” was a success, it had still been his only engagement with the company. Indeed, while he has dipped his toe into the operatic repertory in Los Angeles, at the Metropolitan Opera and elsewhere, he has been largely known as a symphonic conductor.“But I thought,” Neef recalled, “why not ask?”That ask eventually resulted in a coup for the company, which announced on Friday morning that Dudamel would be its next music director, starting in August for an initial term of six years, overlapping for much of that period with the Los Angeles position, where his current contract runs through the 2025-26 season.The appointment marks a turning point in the heady career of an artist who made his name as a wunderkind with orchestras in North and South America and is now, at 40, taking the reins at one of Europe’s most venerable opera companies, founded in 1669 as the Académie d’Opéra by Louis XIV.Dudamel said he had not required much convincing when Neef offered him the permanent position.“It’s a big and beautiful responsibility,” he said.Dudamel in the Palais Garnier, one of the Paris Opera’s theaters, on April 15. “I have been developing my opera career in the way that I wanted to,” Dudamel said. “I took my time.”Julien MignotDudamel — who was born in Venezuela in 1981 and was trained there by El Sistema, the free government-subsidized program that teaches music to children, including some in its poorest areas — occupies a unique position in music. He is sought by leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic. But he also appeared in a Super Bowl halftime show; was the classical icon Trollzart in the animated film “Trolls World Tour”; is conductor of the score for Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film version of “West Side Story”; and inspired a messy-haired main character in the Amazon series “Mozart in the Jungle.” In 2019 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.His renown will surely be a shot in the arm for the Paris Opera, which like other arts organizations is warily eyeing the need to reintroduce itself to its core audience after the long closures of the pandemic, at the same time as it aims to capture new operagoers. Handsomely subsidized by the French government, the company has expanded its audience in recent years, but still faces the pressure of roiling debates about racial representation and the relevance of expensive-to-produce classical art forms.“Our future is not validated by our history,” Neef said. “This Covid crisis has put us in a pressure cooker and reinforced and amplified the need to give people real artistic reasons for why we need to exist, why this has value.”He added that Dudamel was “already a very credible ambassador for that. What he’s done successfully is, he’s broken down barriers.”It is no longer the norm — especially outside German-speaking countries — for opera music directors to start as pianists and singer coaches and work their way up through the ranks, as Philippe Jordan, 46, Dudamel’s predecessor in Paris, did. While Dudamel lacks that upbringing in the nuances and logistical complexities of the art form, and his operatic appearances have been sporadic, he is not unknown at major houses. He made his Teatro alla Scala debut in 2006, when he was in his mid-20s, and had his first appearance with the Berlin State Opera the following year. He first conducted at the Vienna State Opera in 2016, and at the Met in 2018, with Verdi’s “Otello”; on Wednesday he finished a run of “Otello” in Barcelona.“I have been developing my opera career in the way that I wanted to do, and I feel very good about that,” he said. “I took my time.”Neef pointed out that Yannick Nézet-Séguin, 46, the Met’s music director since 2018, did not start there with an enormous repertory, either. “The question is not about quantity,” Neef said. “And these things are a little bit deceptive: When you look at the list of operas Gustavo has conducted, it’s from Mozart to John Adams. He’s been conducting opera as long as he’s been conducting symphonic music.”Asked which works he is most looking forward to tackling, Dudamel replied, “Everything.” In Paris this fall he is scheduled to conduct Puccini’s “Turandot” and Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro.” In addition to mainstream repertory, he said he hoped to work with living composers from Europe as well as North and South America, including Adams, Thomas Adès and Gabriela Ortiz.He added that he is keen to conduct the Paris Opera Ballet, the company’s in-house dance company. Dudamel said his mentor, José Antonio Abreu, the founder of El Sistema, often took him to the ballet to learn about conducting.“It was part of my education,” he said. “Even for my way of seeing the music.”His appointment will involve significant travel between Paris and Los Angeles, but his commitment to the Philharmonic is one Dudamel said he has no intention of curtailing. “I will share my time between the two families,” he said.Chad Smith, the chief executive of the Philharmonic, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, “With Paris as a place where Dudamel can delve more deeply into opera, it creates a perfect balance with his orchestral home in L.A.”What he will cut back on is guest conducting, a process he said he started a few years ago in order to shift his focus to longer-term projects.“The way we’re going to organize it is the way he works in L.A., too,” Neef said. “Long periods that hang together, rather than a lot of travel.”Neef added that Dudamel would be a charismatic and visible link between the company’s main stage productions and its educational endeavors. In Los Angeles, Dudamel has contributed to the Philharmonic’s robust educational outreach, especially the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, a program inspired by El Sistema that was founded in 2007.He also continues to also hold the post of music director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, but after he criticized the Venezuelan government in 2017, the country canceled his planned international tour with that ensemble. While he has not been able to perform with the Simón Bolívar since then, he still works with it remotely and has sometimes met outside Venezuela with groups of its players; during the pandemic he has had sessions with them over Zoom.His appointment comes two months after the release of a report on discrimination and diversity at the Paris Opera. The report focused on changes to the repertory, school admissions process and racial and ethnic makeup of the ballet company. At the same time, opera companies around the world have been called on to make their staffs, artists and productions more representative.Dudamel said in the interview that he would press for that conversation to continue at the Paris Opera over the long term. “Sometimes we pretend to do changes,” he said, snapping his fingers to indicate overly fast decisions. “In that way, you cannot develop something that is strong for the future.”Neef said that alongside Ching-Lien Wu, the company’s recently appointed (and first female) chorus master, Dudamel’s hiring was part of an effort to change the face of the company’s executive ranks and how it thinks about diversity and equity.“It’s already what he lives and who he has been in L.A. and other places,” Neef said. “I think there’s great opportunity to be gained from that experience for us, to have someone with that experience at the table at the highest level.”The next step is for Dudamel to learn French. “I’m starting!” he said, before adding, “I’m very bad with languages.”One carrot will be the opportunity to finally read one of his favorite books — Rousseau’s “Confessions,” which he discovered as a teenager and brings with him everywhere — in the original. “I will try,” Dudamel said, smiling. 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      Gustavo Dudamel, superestrella de la música clásica, dirigirá la Ópera de París

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      En una jugada maestra, la venerable compañía ha contratado como su próximo director musical al excepcional artista clásico que también ha conquistado la fama en la cultura popular.En un golpe maestro de la venerable Ópera de París, fundada en 1669 por Luis XIV, la compañía anunció el viernes que el conductor superestrella Gustavo Dudamel será su próximo director musical.Dudamel, líder musical de la Filarmónica de Los Ángeles desde 2009 e inusual artista clásico que ha cosechado un estatus de celebridad de la cultura pop, solo ha dirigido una única producción en París: La Bohème en 2017. Y, aunque en Los Ángeles ha jugueteado con el repertorio operístico, tanto en la Ópera Metropolitana como en otros escenarios, es más conocido como conductor sinfónico.Pero para quienes han seguido de cerca el ascenso constante de Dudamel en los últimos 15 años, no será sorpresa otro gran nombramiento. El nuevo puesto es un hito en la magnífica carrera de un artista que se hizo renombre como niño prodigio con las orquestas en Norte y Sudamérica y que ahora, a los 40 años, tomará las riendas de una de las compañías de ópera más antiguas de Europa. Ocupará el cargo a partir de agosto, en principio por seis años, superpuestos en gran parte con su trabajo en Los Ángeles, donde su contrato actual llega hasta la temporada 2025-26.Dudamel —nacido en Venezuela en 1981 y formado ahí por El Sistema, el programa gratuito subsidiado por el gobierno que enseña música a los niños en las zonas más pobres— ocupa una posición única en el mundo de la música. Lo asedian las principales orquestas, entre ellas la Filarmónica de Berlín y la Filarmónica de Viena.Pero también ha actuado en un espectáculo de medio tiempo del Súper Bowl, apareció como Trollzart en el filme animado Trolls Gira Mundial, dirige la música en la próxima versión fílmica de Steven Spielberg de West Side Story e inspiró un personaje desmelenado en la serie de Amazon Mozart en la Jungla. En 2019 recibió una estrella en el Paseo de la Fama de Hollywood.Sin duda, su renombre será una inyección de energía para la Ópera de París que, como otras organizaciones artísticas, contempla cautelosamente volver a presentarse ante su audiencia tradicional tras el largo cierre pandémico al tiempo que busca captar nuevos asistentes. Con un generoso subsidio del gobierno francés, la compañía —cuyo director Alexander Neef, asumió el cargo el otoño pasado— ha expandido su audiencia en los últimos años, pero aún enfrenta la presión de los agitados debates sobre la representación racial y la relevancia de las costosas formas artísticas clásicas.Ya no se acostumbra —especialmente fuera de los países germanohablantes— que los directores musicales de ópera inicien como pianistas y entrenadores de voz y asciendan el escalafón de la compañía, tal como hizo el antecesor de Dudamel en París, Philippe Jordan, de 46 años. Aunque Dudamel no cuenta con esa preparación, no es un desconocido para las principales casas operísticas. Debutó en la Scala en Milán en 2006, cuando tenía veintitantos años y al año siguiente se presentó en la Ópera Estatal de Berlín. Su primera actuación en la Ópera del Estado de Viena fue en 2016 y en la Met en 2018 con Otello de Verdi. El miércoles concluyó una temporada con Otello en Barcelona.Durante su trabajo en Los Ángeles, ha contribuido al sólido programa educativo de compromiso con la comunidad, en especial con la Orquesta Juvenil de Los Ángeles, un programa inspirado en El Sistema que se fundó en 2007. También sigue ocupando el cargo de director musical de la Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar, pero después de criticar al gobierno de Venezuela en 2017, el gobierno canceló la gira internacional que estaba programada. A pesar de que no ha podido actuar con la Simón Bolívar desde entonces, aún trabaja de forma remota con la agrupación y, en ocasiones, se ha reunido fuera de Venezuela con grupos de sus integrantes.El nombramiento de Dudamel sucede dos meses después de que se dio a conocer un reporte sobre la discriminación y la diversidad en la Ópera de París, enfocado en los cambios al repertorio, el proceso de admisión de la escuela y la composición racial y étnica de su compañía interna de ballet.Pero alrededor del mundo, las compañías de ópera también han sido llamadas a diversificar su personal, elenco artístico y repertorios. Junto con Ching-Lien Wu, la recién nombrada maestra del coro de la Ópera de París, la contratación de Dudamel forma parte de un esfuerzo por cambiar el rostro de las filas ejecutivas de la compañía y su enfoque hacia la diversidad y la igualdad.Zachary Woolfe ha sido el editor de música clásica desde 2015. Antes fue crítico de la ópera en The New York Observer. @zwoolfe More