Dudamel’s real reasons for quitting Paris?
OperaHere’s what Opera boss Alexander Neef tells Le Point:
He understood that the Paris Opera is an ogre that is always hungry. It really was too much for him. We felt the stress mounting between January and the time he resigned. He had a hard time expressing it verbally because as soon as he entered the pit, he was happy. But he understood that he could not perform his duties as expected. That’s dealing with the ogre: not only administration, but everything that is not musical, plus 175 orchestral musicians to take care of…’
This does not stack up. Only a naif or an amateur would not know the size of the job, and Dude is neither.
He flunked the challenge and peremptorily quit. Let’s see how he fares in New York.
Normally Dudamel will come back in Paris in spring 24 with the LA Phil.
What a horrible post.
Sometimes things don’t work out, and there may be other reasons that have not been disclosed.
Burn out?
Long-Covid?
Racism?
Flight shame?
Sexual harassment?
Incompetence?
Money?
Gustavo- likely none of those reasons, based on what we hear. The way he gets around, surely not burnout. He seems to be very competent at concealing his lack thereof. Again, why so mean-spirited?
He can’t speak French, for starters. Then, the American fixation with diversity this, diversity that may end up working for NY but not necessarily so for Paris. Last, has he ever conducted anything that anyone can call up as remotely close to benchmark?
His West Side Story for Spielberg was kinda benchmark.
[with a little bit of support from music consultant John Williams…]
I don’t see Paris Opera doing West Side Story anytime soon…unless Dudamel hoped that would be his diversity piece there.
He speaks better French than most Canadian politicians, who are required to by law.
That is absolutely and unequivocally not true. (About Canadian politicians — not sure about Dudamel’s French).
The vast majority of conductors who have ever been have “never conducted anything that could be called “benchmark”.” That is an absurd and preposterous expectation to demand for any conductor, one that almost all would fail almost all of the time. That does not diminish his talent, which is validated by a huge number of other distinguished musicians. Or do you imagine the whole classical world is nothing but ignorant fools except for you? Is Debra Borda a fool also? After all the acclaim he has received, he does not need to prove himself. Paris has been a dead end or a disaster for many a maestro. So he isn’t Toscanini. News flash. Who is? Every great orchestra you can think of is still eager to have him. Opera is it’s own world. Why so mean-spirited? Would you be so smug if he was European?
My immediate thought when you mentioned Toscanini was Gustavo Dudamel is much kinder and more patient a person than Toscanini was, at least with musicians.
El sistema is not an opera training ground, so unlike maestros who learned their trade by rising thru the ranks of regional opera houses, Karajan for example, Dudamel had no idea of how opera houses operated.
It’s the fault of the Paris Opera management for hiring him in the first place. He doesn’t even have an exemplary record in the few popular operas he conducted here and there.
Hype can carry you very far in the orchestral world, but it can lead you to disaster in the opera world, so he’ll do fine in NY, just keep him the hell away from the Met, Nezet Seguin and Dudamel will co-exist in peaceful détente at Lincoln Center.
Dudamel has conducted at the Met, it was very good.
“He flunked the challenge and peremptorily quit.”
Please stop with the disingenuous Schadenfreude. Dudamel did not flunk anything. The Opéra de Paris is a beast. The history of the institution is strewn with distinguished Music Directors who found no joy (see Barenboim 35 years ago). Neef (out of his depth) sold Dudamel on joining his project, then left him to the lions. The quoted interview concedes Dudamel was isolated and under-supported.
Meanwhile, as reported here and elsewhere, Dudamel has been travelling back to Venezuela, the Simon Bolivar Orchestra has been revived (see their recent return to the Edinburgh Festival), and in “spending more time with his family” in Venezuela, LA and elsewhere, the conductor has clearly found more personally rewarding preoccupations.
Dudamel’s musical gifts and social concerns are well-documented. Think of them what you will, but throughout his career, he has been remarkably consistent. His success in New York will depend on the people around him. The author of The Maestro Myth should know.
A conductor should be a musical director of only one institute. Dudamel had also the LAPO and already works on his NYPO job. He guest conducts regularly with the VPO, the BPO and some other orchestras, and still has the Simon Bolivar orchestra. It is far too much.
Yes! Music directors should remain with one orchestra at a time, live in the city where they conduct like an actual employee of the orchestra. They should also conduct many many more concerts with their home orchestra. No more 40% season commitments. I want to see a music director embrace the job fully and work season round with an orchestra to build its new artistic vision. Right now all orchestras are just a name with dozens of interchangeable parts. We no longer have the Karajan Berlin Phil or the Ozawa Boston Symphony or the Abbado London Symphony. Heck even the LSO isn’t featuring it’s new MD on opening night next fall! Couldn’t get him from Rome in time?
Petrenko at Berlin seems to provide a ray of hope. Hoping he continues to bring their sound back up to snuff after the disastrous Abbado / Rattle tenures.
I believe that he got in over his head.
It’s pretty unusual that he got such a major opera appointment without ever having worked at an opera company as an assistant where he’d be exposed to the day-to-day duties of a chief conductor. Even YNS put in 4 years as an assistant with the Montreal Opera early in his career.
In fact, it used to be pretty typical that conductors started their career grinding away in assist positions with opera companies.
Dudamel has been the head of the Los Angeles for many years, so he comes to the transition to N.Y. with experience and a comparable skill set. Running a major international opera company is an entirely different matter.
We will never know the real reason, but if historic precedent is anything to go by and combine that with general knowledge of how often difficult and extremely unpleasant it is to work in France and navigate the highly politicised and toxic French administrative environment, along with everything that comes with it, from endless strikes, internal tension, discontent and miserable musicians, Paris is clearly not the place for a professional used to the U.S. system, which is not without its share of issues, but maintains an upbeat, efficient and positive vibe…and most importantly does not have constant upheaval and political interference and the usual outdated manner of French social conflicts worthy of the 1960’s.
Dudamel follows a long line of disenchanted maestros, from Karajan, Solti, Barenboim, Bychkov and Chung who suffered greatly in France and left with a bad image of how things operate there and how difficult it is to really do anything innovative and out of the box in such a sclerotic, tumultuous and oppressive place. Dudamel should have no regrets whatsoever. He is too positive and upbeat for a place like France.
James Conlon did very well there for a number of years.
He was ok, but not VERY GOOD….
You might enjoy the movie Meeting Venus, one of the best films about opera I have seen!
Anyone who has followed him for any length of time knows he’s a big baby, a fraud, a poseur. The sooner he burns out and exits the scene the better it is for music.
Interesting. I’ve long suspected he has a talent for self-promotion, but I hadn’t suspected that he was actually a fraud.
Gotta admit, I haven’t heard the “West Side Story” mention elsewhere; otherwise, nothing he’s recorded has set the world on fire (although I do appreciate his Ives effort; perhaps he will re-record later when his interpretations have matured).
Bitter much? Jealous probably. Poor JW.
Mr. Weiss- Again, why so mean-spirited? For you to be correct, an awful lot of highly respected musicians and orchestra managers have to be fools. They aren’t. The notoriously fussy New York Phil voted for him UNANIMOUSLY. Explain that.
It‘s not the first time Paris Opera pushed out its conductor. Did Barenboim not know the task before he took the Paris job? He was not an amateur. Nor was Myung-whun Chung.
NY is a walk in the park by comparison….
But didn’t the Paris Opera almost do away with the Music Director position at some point? Has the administrative structure really become so radically different that the Music Director is now expected to deal with “everything that is not musical”?
HSY And didn’t pretty much the same happen to Myung Whun Chung some 30 years ago?
This sounds convincing to me, but I only worked in one “loony bin,” not all of them.
I believe neither Dudamel nor Nezet-Seguin had a clue what they were getting in for. (50-60% of a clue, maybe.)
A “monster”? How sad to hear such a venerable institution degraded in that way…poor musicians, « Ogres » aussi ?!!??!!
As from what I heard he left Paros just because of Messi…
As from what I heard he left Paris just because of Messi…
Too many conductors taking on more than they can handle in multiple major music directorships. Boards of symphony orchestras, opera companies and festivals take note when hiring. They are better off with a Music Director who has perhaps one steady guest conductorship, rather than more than they can handle politically and administratively.
Apparently, for Doodie, Paris no longer has the allure for him that it used to have! Hey, nowadays, a lot of people feel that way about what used to be “Gay Paree”. But not to worry about Doodie…like a cat, he always manages to land on his feet!
Gustavo is coddled in LA with a personal assistant/interpreter and a huge administrative staff whose goal is to please him. Unlike LA, nobody (musician, administrator or clerk) will treat him like he’s a god.
His lack of fluency in French and English probably hasn’t endeared him to the staff. Add more than a bit of French chauvinism and racism to the mix and you have a recipe for discord.
He should do fine in New York.
I met him years ago on what may have been hos first North American engagement, and his English was functional, if not quite fluent. Hard to believe it has not improved after all the LA years.
I agree: if he does not speak French, to start with, this was inevitable.
Also, he may had been unable to understand the French way of life…
I hope this was a one-off for him. I am sooooo hoping he does splendidly succeed in NY with the Philharmonic.
NYPO seems to respond either to a dominant personality (Boulez) or hyper enthusiasm (Bernstein). I think at least the latter is possible with The Dude.
That’s an unfair assessment. Dudamel well knows what is involved in leading a major arts institution, let’s not forget that the LA Philharmonic rivals most if not all European orchestras in administrative size.
We don’t know what’s happening with his personal life. You can love playing music but be miserable at the behind the scenes schlop that goes on in the workplace.
I’ve commented before as someone who’s left the performance profession behind. I empathize with Mr. Dudamel as someone who genuinely loves performing, when I stepped into the orchestra there was nowhere I was ever happier. Nevertheless, the mounting stress of fighting a rising cost of living crisis with increasingly precarious and devalued freelance work, I was miserable between performances.
I’m sure many of my former colleagues and teachers would look down on myself as someone who “flunked the challenge and peremptorily quit” as you so eloquently phrased. This attitude of treating those who willingly pull out of the profession as though they have failed speaks volume, and quite frankly if this is the majority held view than classical music as an industry deserves to die.
Easy, disgruntled musician: you’re passing an awful lot of judgement to compensate for your change of vocation.
That is a harsh judgment, as the poster is simply positing a possible explanation based on his own candidly-expressed experience. I don’t find him passing judgment on anyone.
Or he realised a life of bureaucracy was not for him and was savvy and honest enough to go.
Dealing with an opera company – especially in Paris with two venues – is far different from dealing with an orchestra.
And dealing with singers is pure hell.
I guess Maduro got tired of footing the bill with Venezuelan oil money to pay for the marketing that compensated his flaws and lack of talent for so many years….
The only bills Maduro foots are his own…………….professional Kleptocrat.
Could it be true?
Dudamel is not all he’s cracked up to be? Who would have thought it?
Powerful headline and conclusion. I’m sure the musician strikes had nothing at all to do with his frustrations.
Paris Opera musicians never went on strike…
A typical example of “any conductor can do opera.” There is a reason that all the great opera conductors of the past began as repetitors in the opera house. You can’t do it well unless you really understand the nuance of vocalism and how to truly move with singers. Another reason that opera is struggling in so many places. The conductors make attending the opera a miserable experience.
Or then he realized he is not an operatic conductor…
The hype over this guy is nauseating.Just stick to LA and NY
The hype over the music scene in London is nauseating. There is not a single London orchestra worth the time of top conductors.
I prefer a quitter to a hitter any day.
The real reason that Dudamel, Gus or the Dude, is having a struggle here is that the management team around him is not strong, they spread him too thin and to areas not suited for him. They may have thought him to be another Bernstein, but he is no Lenny. If he focuses on performance at NY Phil, he may succeed. Hopefully he still has Deborah on speed dial.
Conducting opera is not the same as conducting orchestras. An opera conductor should be able to help singers perfect their roles. This takes much opertic trainig and knowhow, but also deep understanding of the genre. How can this be done without full command of the language?
Thinking of Mr. D’s CV one must wonder: When and where did he acquire sufficient knowledge, experiance and taste to manage a great opera company?
You may have a valid point, but there ought to be ways to overcome some of those issues, I believe, with more skillfull management. Why not designate separate vocal directors to deal with the needs and coordination and refining of the singers performances, leaving the conductor to focus on the orchestra. This way, you could have someone highly skilled in all those areas apart from the conductor. Someone who is a master at understanding voices and languages. Just as you have stage managers, costume managers, lighting directors, etc. I would have thought that was already the case, in fact. This way, no one needs to be a master of everything. The conductor doesn’t need years and years of apprenticeship coaching the singers, for instance. Older singers who are no longer able to carry major rolls would be great for this.
I’m not surprised the Dude has left Paris. It was his mistake to take the job in the first place. I wrote this years ago too. Paris Opera and the Dude have different approaches, needs and desires. He should have remained in LA. I also wonder if NYC is right for him.
I agree: it was a big mistake. I hope that he does well in NY but it seems that the orchestra needs a Boulez discipline conductor, and Dudamel may not be the right man there….it would be sad if he finds the job too much to cope with…