The Aix-en-Provence festival celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this month and will pay homage to its indefatigable founder, Gabriel Dussurget. Few may realize however that his arrival in then unfashionable Aix back in 1948 was due to an eccentric countess, Lily Pastré.
Lily was a local patron of the arts who had hidden and bankrolled a number of leading Jewish artists during the war. She had a passion for opera and an extraordinary network of contacts, and persuaded Dussurget, much against his better judgement, to visit her in Aix. Within weeks Dussurget, already a successful events producer in Paris, had fallen in love with Aix and Lily too.
Dussurget brought in Georges Wakhévitch, a well-known painter in Paris, to create a back-drop for the Cour de l'Archevêché at the heart of Aix. Wakhevitch found himself working for nothing, as did Hans Rosbaud, the head conductor of Baden-Baden's Südwestfunk orchestra. An entire cast of opera singers also arrived on a promise, most put up on camp beds in Lily’s fading palazzo. And on 28 July 1948 they performed Così Fan Tutte, an opera unfamiliar to French audiences at the time. It was a triumph and the Aix festival succeeded all against the odds.
The following year Dussurget persuaded another friend to get involved, the Ukranian-born Art Deco printmaker, Adolphe Cassandre. He arrived expecting to paint one piece of scenery and found that Dussurget wanted him to make an entire three dimensional theatre. Cassandre rose to the challenge and built seven metres of stage with mobile sets fronting a backdrop, backed by Italianate stage machinery. The full courtyard theatre concept was born.
Dussurget, who died in 1966, always seemed able to blend exactly the right music production with great artists in their own right, which made them eager to visit Aix. Dussurget also had an uncanny knack for discovering fresh vocal talent and strong personalities who would use Aix as a springboard for their career, a tradition his successors continue to this day.
www.festival-aix.com
From our July 2008 e-newsletter
