Venerable festival director quits after box-office slump
OperaAt the press conference for next year’s Chorégies d’Orange festival it was announced that director Jean-Louis Grinda was leaving after a decade in the post.
A look at the small print showed a 2024 profit of €300,000 had turned into a 2025 €150,000 loss.
There’s only one opera next summer and Grinda says that’s not enough for him.
The Chorégies d’Orange claims to be Europe’s oldest festival. Started in a restored Roman ampitheatre in 1869 (eat that, Wagner), its first opera was Méhul’s Joseph (me, neither).
The name Chorégies d’Orange is from the Greek Greek χορηγός khorêgós, for chorus leader.
Be kind. Who among us cannot hum the aria “Vainement, Pharaon…” from Mehul’s JOSEPH EN EGYPTE ?
It’s an ‘ear worm’ with me. Drives me nuts !
Joseph is a well known opera. Those were days when people didn’t just do the same 12 operas.
Χορηγός, Choregos is not the chorus leader, but rather the sponsor who supported financially a choir in ancient dramas competition.
In today’s modern Greek, it means simply a sponsor.
Just in the spirit of enlightenment:
Alice’s father & friend does give one meaning of choregos as the leader of the chorus (who were singing/chanting dancers?)
They give the meaning you have mentioned also, but for Athens.
Classical Greek is a true wonderland.
We snicker at the forgotten composers of yesteryear but even the also-rans had a level of success that any of today’s composers would kill for.
Méhul had but 41 operas make it to the stage? How did he ever show his face in public?
Perhaps after Brexit it depends on how you define Europe. The first Three Choirs Festival was held in Gloucester in 1715 (eat that, Chorégies).
Not an opera festival.
Méhul is hardly a name to snicker at. He was the first composer to be called Romantic, he composed the anthem of Revolutionary France, and he had a huge influence on Berlioz.
It’s hard 🙁 the ancients would say menebat laciol