We met him two months ago, during rehearsals for a Nixon in China which will no doubt remain the highlight of his brief stay at the Paris Opera – a great moment of music, inspiring in its vigor and musical precision. The spirited Gustavo Dudamel, 42, beamed with love for his profession and seemed to approach the necessarily complex life of a superstar conductor without the stress or fatigue that his pace, always between two planes and two continents – he is director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for fourteen years -, however, made it inevitable.
“I’m an optimist,” he told us, and we thought he could do anything – live a fulfilling family life in Spain, home to his wife, 12-year-old son, parents and grandmother. , conducting in Paris and Los Angeles, and preparing for one of the most prestigious positions in the world, the one that long belonged to Leonard Bernstein: the direction of the New York Philharmonic (his appointment will take place in 2026).
Centered on the superstar chef’s desire to spend more time with his loved ones, yesterday’s press release announcing his surprise resignation came as a thunderbolt. Certainly, since the announcement of his appointment in New York, doubts have hovered over his degree of commitment to the Paris Opera, especially since he had withdrawn from the ballet The Dante Project by Wayne McGregor (until May 31 at the Palais Garnier), the performances being finally assumed by the British chef Courtney Lewis.
Alexander Neef, the director of the Paris Opera, will soon announce what will happen to these upcoming performances: Dudamel should logically maintain his presence for at least one of the two operas. We hope so, at least, because it would attenuate a little, for the public as for the musicians, the brutality of his departure. This whole affair is furiously reminiscent of the brief stay in Paris of another star, Benjamin Millepied. The French dancer and choreographer had – like Dudamel – spent most of his career in the United States and only stayed in the French capital as director of dance for one season (2015-2016). His surprise resignation had also been explained by the sacrosanct formula “solely for personal reasons”. Do these reasons include a clash of cultures between personalities from the Anglo-Saxon world and a large French institution with a very particular functioning? The question remains open.
