Jean-Claude Auvray Director

Between 1969 and 1972, Jean‑Claude Auvray was an assistant to several notable directors including Jean Vilar, Margarita Wallmann, Jean‑Pierre Ponnelle, and Giorgio Strehler and he worked on numerous productions including Don Carlo (Verona Arena, 1969), Boris Godunov (Cologne, 1970), Otello (Monte Carlo, 1970), Maria Stuarda (Milan’s La Scala, 1971), and La Cenerentola (Florence Musical May, 1972). 

In 1972, he directed his first production at the Nice Opera: Norma with Montserrat Caballé. In 1973, Rolf Liebermann hired him for the post of resident director at the Paris Opera. He would remain there until 1977. During that time, he worked on all the great productions from Strehler, Lavelli, and Chéreau. He returned to the Paris Opera in 1982 to direct his own production of Tosca at the Palais Garnier and Così fan tutte at the Opéra Comique. 

In 1974, his production of Manon at the Capitole in Toulouse received the French Critics’ Award. From 1981 to 1988, he directed thirteen productions for the Basle Opera, including Rigoletto, La Clemenza di Tito, Idomeneo, and Les Contes d’Hoffmann.

Jean-Claude Auvray has directed some sixty productions to date, including in London (La Bohème, La Finta Giardiniera, L’Enfant et les sortilèges, L’Heure espagnole, Gianni Schicchi…), Munich (Carmen), New York (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Houston (Manon), Geneva (La Forza del destino, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria), Tel Aviv (Werther, Eugene Onegin, Attila, Macbeth, Manon Lescaut), Marseille (Fidelio, La Traviata, Dialogues des carmélites, Un ballo in maschera), Nice (Les Vêpres siciliennes, Attila, Manon, Faust, La Traviata), Toulouse (the French premiere of Henze’s Der Prinz von Homburg, which earned the 1997 Critics’ Prize), Montpellier (a Mozart and Verdi cycle), Strasbourg (L’Africaine), Avignon (Dialogues des carmélites), Nancy and Nantes (Tristan und Isolde, Faust), the Aix Festival (Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra, Tancredi), Verona (La Gioconda), the Wexford Festival (Le Roi d’Ys, La Dame blanche, Der Vampyr) and the Chorégies d’Orange (Don Carlo, Boris Godunov, Elektra, La Forza del destino, Tosca, Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliacci).

In recent years, he has directed La Forza del destino at the Paris Opera (2011) and at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona (2012), Un ballo in maschera at the Chorégies d’Orange (2013), and Macbeth and Eugene Onegin in Tel Aviv and Dallas (2016).