Jean-Louis Martinoty (20 January 1946 in Étampes â€" 27 January 2016
in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French opera director and writer.[1][2].
Renowned for his stagings of baroque operas in the eighties, he was
also General Administrator of the Paris Opera (1986â€"1989).Jean-Louis
Martinoty spent his childhood and his teens in Algeria where his
father was a tax official. In 1961, his parents came back to France
and settled in Nice. He studied classical letters and learned cello.
He started his professional life as a French teacher for some years,
then as writer and music critic at the newspaper "L'humanité". For an
interview, he met in 1972 the lyric director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle who
invited him to come to the Salzburg Festival where he was preparing
Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. One day, he replaced him for a
repetition and since this time, he became his assistant for his
stagings and wrote for him the scripts for most of his opera films
(whose La clemenza di Tito, Madama Butterfly, Carmina Burana). He made
himself one film (Pasticcio from Haendel) and realized two
documentaries about Italian mannerism. In 1992, he married with Tamara
Adloff.[3]Jean-Louis Martinoty made his first staging in 1975 with
Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer' s Night Dream at the Strasbourg Opera
followed by Offenbach's La Perichole. Then the Lyon Opera asked him to
make two stagings of baroque operas while baroque music was forgotten
since more than two centuries in France (Cavalli's Ercole Amante in
1979, Charpentier's David et Jonathas in 1981). He continued with a
lot of baroque productions all along his career. Among the more famous
: Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione of Poppea in 1982 with the baroque
conductor Jean-Claude Malgoire and especially in the same year
Jean-Philippe Rameau's Les Boreades in the Musical Festival of
Aix-en-Provence with John Elliot Gardiner as conductor. This last
opera, put on for the first time since 1770, obtained a striking
success and the Lyric Grand Prix Review.[4] Some years later, Lully's,
Alceste in the Champs-Elysées Theater in Paris has been stayed in the
memories, as the rare Salieri'sTarare, Cesti's L'Argia and Gassmann's
L'Opera Seria in the Schewtzingen Festival.His baroque world's
experience made him write a book in 1990 "Voyages à l'intérieur de
l'opéra baroque, de Monteverdi à Mozart" (Voyages inside baroque
opera, from Monteverdi to Mozart) in which he analysed a dozen works
on the dramatic, scenographic and political levels. But his many
stagings (about a hundred between 1975 and 2015) were not only baroque
operas and addressed the whole opera repertory on French and
International stages : Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at Covent
Garden, Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in Karlsruhe Festival for
which he made also decors, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld in
the Paris Opera, Bizet's Carmen in Tokyo, Mozart's Don Giovanni in the
Wiener Staatsoper[5], etc.He made also an incursion into the Viennese
operetta with Frantz Lehar's The Merry Widow and Johan Strauss's The
Gipsy Baron at the Zurich Opera under the musical direction of
Nikolaus Harnoncourt and even musical comedy with The Little Prince
from Saint-Exupery's novel on a music by Richard Cocciante at The
Casino de Paris in 2002.
in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French opera director and writer.[1][2].
Renowned for his stagings of baroque operas in the eighties, he was
also General Administrator of the Paris Opera (1986â€"1989).Jean-Louis
Martinoty spent his childhood and his teens in Algeria where his
father was a tax official. In 1961, his parents came back to France
and settled in Nice. He studied classical letters and learned cello.
He started his professional life as a French teacher for some years,
then as writer and music critic at the newspaper "L'humanité". For an
interview, he met in 1972 the lyric director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle who
invited him to come to the Salzburg Festival where he was preparing
Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. One day, he replaced him for a
repetition and since this time, he became his assistant for his
stagings and wrote for him the scripts for most of his opera films
(whose La clemenza di Tito, Madama Butterfly, Carmina Burana). He made
himself one film (Pasticcio from Haendel) and realized two
documentaries about Italian mannerism. In 1992, he married with Tamara
Adloff.[3]Jean-Louis Martinoty made his first staging in 1975 with
Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer' s Night Dream at the Strasbourg Opera
followed by Offenbach's La Perichole. Then the Lyon Opera asked him to
make two stagings of baroque operas while baroque music was forgotten
since more than two centuries in France (Cavalli's Ercole Amante in
1979, Charpentier's David et Jonathas in 1981). He continued with a
lot of baroque productions all along his career. Among the more famous
: Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione of Poppea in 1982 with the baroque
conductor Jean-Claude Malgoire and especially in the same year
Jean-Philippe Rameau's Les Boreades in the Musical Festival of
Aix-en-Provence with John Elliot Gardiner as conductor. This last
opera, put on for the first time since 1770, obtained a striking
success and the Lyric Grand Prix Review.[4] Some years later, Lully's,
Alceste in the Champs-Elysées Theater in Paris has been stayed in the
memories, as the rare Salieri'sTarare, Cesti's L'Argia and Gassmann's
L'Opera Seria in the Schewtzingen Festival.His baroque world's
experience made him write a book in 1990 "Voyages à l'intérieur de
l'opéra baroque, de Monteverdi à Mozart" (Voyages inside baroque
opera, from Monteverdi to Mozart) in which he analysed a dozen works
on the dramatic, scenographic and political levels. But his many
stagings (about a hundred between 1975 and 2015) were not only baroque
operas and addressed the whole opera repertory on French and
International stages : Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at Covent
Garden, Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in Karlsruhe Festival for
which he made also decors, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld in
the Paris Opera, Bizet's Carmen in Tokyo, Mozart's Don Giovanni in the
Wiener Staatsoper[5], etc.He made also an incursion into the Viennese
operetta with Frantz Lehar's The Merry Widow and Johan Strauss's The
Gipsy Baron at the Zurich Opera under the musical direction of
Nikolaus Harnoncourt and even musical comedy with The Little Prince
from Saint-Exupery's novel on a music by Richard Cocciante at The
Casino de Paris in 2002.
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