Gerard Mortier

Gerard Alfons August Mortier (Baron Mortier, 25 November 1943 – 8 March 2014) was a Belgian opera director and administrator of Flemish origin.

Born in Ghent, the son of a baker, Mortier attended in youth the Jesuit private school Sint-Barbaracollege, following the death of his mother. He subsequently studied law and journalism at Ghent University.

Mortier pursued apprenticeships in opera administration under Christoph von Dohnányi in Frankfurt and Rolf Liebermann in Paris. He worked for the Flanders Festival from 1968 to 1972. His first major administrative post was as the general director of La Monnaie (De Munt) in Brussels from 1981 to 1991, where he was credited with artistically rejuvenating the company. He subsequently held the general directorship of the Salzburg Festival from 1991 to 2001.

Mortier was the founding director of the Ruhrtriennale arts festival in Germany, leading it from 2002 to 2004. He was inspired to "a social and artistic experiment: how to attract new audiences to the classics and galvanize a depressed corner of Germany." At the same time, he was able to work his own interests in flouting tradition and attracting new audiences to the Ruhr. He put intimate productions into expansive, renovated industrial spaces. In 2003, he offered an ambitious season of

"23 productions with 129 performances in 15 spaces, along with additional concerts, a fringe festival and what promises to be an astonishing installation of a Bill Viola video spectacle, Five Angels for the Millennium, inside a mighty, gorgeously restored gas tank in Oberhausen."

Planned was a production of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise in September 2003. Mortier had a "current of spirituality meant to infuse these cathedrals of industry", and emphasized a French subtext in 2003, compared to a German one the year before. He had "faith that audiences will eventually respond to the experimentation by him and his successors."

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