When you get up the curtain of the Garnier Palace this afternoon, it will be a special moment for Iñaki Encina Oyon, born in Escoriaza (Guipúzcoa) 43 years ago.
At the orders of him, the Paris Opera Orchestra will attack Iphigenie in Gluck Tauride, a terrible tragedy transplanted to an elderly, brilliant and controversial residence.
For Encina it will be the first time he directs an opera of the season.

«It is a fantastic opera and a challenge for a director.
Gluck is the first one who writes everything with the orchestra instead of the clavecin.
One directs from the first to the last note since there are no pauses for the orchestra ».

“It’s an important step in my career.
The National Opera of Paris is a world top 5, but I feel at home because I was part of its young artists.
I entered as a pianist and I am the first to lead.
So I feel being on my site ».

As the headline, Encina has directed in Rouen, Dijon and in Paris in other rooms but in the Paris opera works as an assistant director.
This is: the one who helps the holder to share the work of the orchestra and the singers and replaces it, sometimes, in the scenic trials.
“In those essays guide the singer to make the role of him, correct him the tempo and tuning,” says Encina.

“Thomas Hengelbrock knows me and delegates a lot.”
Hengelbrock is the holder of the square with which he will begin to prepare Haendel alkina, the opera with which he will return to Garnier’s pit in December.

«When you manage symphonic repertoire, what you essay happens happens.
At opera, singers are on stage, sing from memory and do not listen to the pit;
The orchestra sometimes neither listens to the set.
You manage the information, you achieve that the singer and the orchestra go together.
At opera, the director is fundamental ».

Flashback In the early 1980s. Iñaki is one of the six brothers of a family without more musical tradition than “a Mother Singina” and amateur Jota Navarra.
One day he asked Him’s sister, enrolled in Solfeo, who took him because she was scared.
“He was five years old and he was small to do Solfeo so they put me to draw Sun keys on a foil leaf.
Meanwhile, the class sang.
I loved”.

Vitoria, Toulousse and San Sebastián were stations on their trip.
In 2005, with the title of orchestra director, “I realized that I wanted to lead opera, something that is not taught at any conservatory.
For that you have to go to an opera theater ».
And he went to Paris.

Christian Schirm, who then directed the formation structure of the Paris Opera, recalls that Encina was surprised by “his interest in singing, by voice, and by empathy with singers.
In addition to her musical solidity, she spoke several languages.
She always knew how to attract my attention to young talents.
He is an authentic singing chief who is going to become Kapellmeister.
I am very proud of him ».

Qualities?
“You have to have communication and management capabilities but, above all, of leadership.
At the same time that you allow them to be expressed and realized as musicians, unify that desire “. In parallel, it has recorded two discs.
The first is dedicated to parents composers of the piano teacher who illuminated the future of her in Toulouse, Thérèse Dussaut, 82 years old today.
Dussaut was the one who detected a future orchestra director in the piano student.
The voice put on the Soprano Adriana González, a Guatemalan that Encina met in the world choir and that she contacted the Paris Opera.
With the recorded disc, González won the main singing contest, Operalia.
This helped the promotion and decided both to edit a second dedicated to the Songs of Isaac Albéniz, a quasi-unknown facet of the famous author of Iberia, with 30 European songs, many in English.
Next project, a disk with Rondos de Mozart.