Managing Director

Born in Switzerland in 1971, Alain Perroux studied the Arts at Geneva University (Musicology and German Literature), and choral conducting (with Michel Corboz) and singing at the Geneva Music Conservatory. After eight years in music journalism (at the Journal de Genève, then Le Temps), he worked as a dramatist for the Grand Théâtre in Geneva from 2001 to 2009. He then went on to be the Director of Artistic Management at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. In 1998, he created a version of Ibsen's and Grieg's Peer Gynt for actors and singers for the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the recording of which by Aeon/Harmonia Mundi has won many awards (Diapason d'or de l'année, Choc du monde de la musique) and for which he also undertook the stage direction for the dialogues (in three languages with actors including Lambert Wilson, Susanne Lothar and Sir Derek Jacobi). This version of the concert has since been reprised in Prague, Essen, Cologne, Dortmund, London, Vienna, Graz, Limoges and Montpellier. He has published books introducing opera (L'Opéra, mode d'emploi, 2000 and 2015) and American musicals (La Comédie musicale, mode d'emploi, 2009), and monographs (Frank Martin and Franz Schreker), and is editor-in-chief of several collective works. From 2003 to 2011, he led the Opéra de Poche of Geneva, an independent opera company with whom he staged works in several towns in French-speaking Switzerland (stage production and direction): Debussy's Impressions de Pelléas in 2004 and 2011, Cavalli's La Calisto in 2006 and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd in 2008 and 2009. He wrote his first opera libretto for the creation of Xavier Dayer's Contes de la lune vague après la pluie. In 2015, he also wrote the French adaptation (Monstre du labyrinth) of Jonathan Dove's opera The Monster in the Maze created by Simon Rattle at the Aix Festival, as well as adaptations of dialogues in Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers and La Belle Hélène for the Opéra national de Lorraine. In January 2020, he was appointed Managing Director of the Opéra national du Rhin (Strasbourg, Colmar and Mulhouse).

Translation in English: Helen Sontag