Born November 2, 1944; died October 7, 2013

Patrice Chéreau, the French theatre, film and opera director, and actor, died this Monday (7 October) of lung cancer in Paris. He was only 68. For music-lovers Chéreau’s name will always be associated with the radical centenary staging of Wagner’s Ring cycle that he mounted in tandem with Pierre Boulez in Bayreuth between 1976 and 1980. At first the sight of Wagner’s supposedly mythological characters in everyday 18th (Rheingold), 19th (Walküre and Siegfried) and 20th-century (Götterdämmerung) costumes, not to mention the modern hydro-electric power dam that represented the Rhine, scandalised traditionalist spectators. Soon, however, the sheer beauty of the production’s scenery (designed by Richard Peduzzi, Chéreau’s regular collaborator since his early 20s) and the level of acting achieved by an increasingly committed international cast (including René Kollo, Gwyneth Jones and Donald McIntyre) won over all but the most conservative sceptics. Widely seen around the world as the first Ring production to be televised complete, Chéreau’s staging started a revolution in opera as far-reaching as that initiated by Wieland Wagner.

Already acting, directing and conceiving production ideas when he was at secondary school, Chéreau began his professional career in 1966 at the Théâtre de Sartrouville, a suburb to the north-east of Paris. From the beginning his repertoire mixed up new plays with French and German classics. (His knowledge of German language and culture would prove exceptionally useful for his Bayreuth debut and future opera work.) In the 1970s, together with the older director Roger Planchon, he took over the Théâtre National Populaire at Villeurbanne near Lyons. His play productions were now becoming nationally noticed events in France and Italy and stagings of Richard II (where he alternated in the roles of Richard and Bolingbroke as well as directing the show) and Marivaux’s La Dispute (a short curtain-raiser that, in Chéreau’s staging, ran over two hours including a Gluck overture) were judged to be of seminal importance.  

By the end of the 1970s Chéreau had not only directed his first feature film but had taken on opera (Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri at the Spoleto Festival with Thomas Schippers and Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the Paris Opéra starring Nicolai Gedda as a down-and-out looking Hoffmann). In the penultimate year of their Bayreuth work, Boulez invited Chéreau to stage the world premiere of the three-act Lulu (completion by Friedrich Cerha) in Paris. A success almost more overwhelming than that of the Ring, the production was filmed for TV but has so far only circulated on poor quality pirates.

Chéreau now took some time away from the lyric stage. He declined Bayreuth’s offer of a new Tristan und Isolde with Daniel Barenboim as a follow-up production to the Ring, saying that he found the opera like a radio play and could not imagine how to stage it. Meanwhile he was busy both in the theatre (including new work written by his close friend Bernard-Marie Koltès) and the cinema (including the epic account of the Massacre of St Bartholomew, La Reine Margot). Mozart brought him back into opera with productions of Lucio Silla, Don Giovanni and (at Aix in 2005 with Daniel Harding) Così fan tutte, an opera which, after La Dispute, he seemed made to direct. Meanwhile he had collaborated with Daniel Barenboim on Wozzeck for the Châtelet in Paris, Berlin and Tokyo and Pierre Boulez on Janáĉek’s From The House of the Dead in Vienna, Aix and New York. It was Barenboim who persuaded him finally to undertake Tristan und Isolde onstage for La Scala in 2007.

In the latter production Chéreau developed a close working relationship with his Isolde, Waltraud Meier, who took part (singing one of the Wesendonck Lieder) in the special ‘tableaux’ Chéreau staged at the Paris Louvre in 2010 and was Klytemnestra in his final production, Elektra at this year’s Aix festival. The Ring, Wozzeck, Così, House of the Dead and Tristan productions can be seen on DVD, others will hopefully follow.

Mike Ashman