Lotfi Mansouri who left indelible marks on opera in Toronto and San Francisco, died at his home in the northern California city on Friday from pancreatic cancer. He was
John Terauds
John Terauds, Editor-Emeritus of Ludwig van Toronto, is currently a Divinity student at the University of Toronto and a church music director. He joined the Toronto Star in , was the classical music critic from to , and continues as a freelance critic for the paper. He is the co-author of Roy Thomson Hall: A Portrait, a book written with Toronto Star Colleague, William Littler.
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Mansouri, who took over the Canadian Opera Company while it was still called the Canadian Opera Association in It received its present name the following year, and Mansouri laid the foundations for the internationally respected presenter it is today.
It was under his leadership that the company acquired a derelict Victorian gas facility on Toronto&#;s Front St. It was turned into the company&#;s offices, rehearsal studios, workshop and performance spaces, now known as the Joey & Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre, a space that also houses the Canadian Children&#;s Opera
The volume (over-priced at
$) might just as well have been called ‘the loves and hates of
Lotfollah,’ well spiced with gossip, pay-back, and self-regard as it is.
In other words, it is a business-as-usual celebrity memoir. But it is also a
bit more, because in many ways Mansouri was a cut above.
To be serious about Mansouri, his long career producing opera in Europe and
leading North American companies such as Canadian Opera in Toronto and the San
Francisco Opera, accomplished much that was creative and remains positive for
the opera world. Perhaps Mansouri’s finest hours were in Toronto, where
he took a minor provincial opera company and developed it into a thoroughly
professional operation capable of first rate performances, with excellent
community outreach and support. He also was the earliest sponsor of
‘supertitles’ or singing texts projected over the stage during
performances. His reputation in Canada remains strong and favorable, as it
should.
Mansouri, born () to a family of some prominence in Iran, and came to
the US to study music much to the dismay of his father who wanted him enrolled
in Scotland to study medicine, rema
| "When you do a piece like this, it evolves. If you are too tied to your original vision I think you limit yourself." | |
| "The process accumulates speed and complexity. Then you have the workshop, where you bring artists together so the creators can hear [and] see if this sounds right." | |
| "Opera is a detailed, complex process. Then all of a sudden the curtain's going up, and three years' work depends on three hours of performance." | |
Lotfi Mansouri
* Téhéran (IR).
Issu d’une famille de la noblesse iranienne, Lotfollah M. obtient aux États-Unis en le bachelor en psychologie de l’Université de Californie (UCLA). Il découvre le chant lyrique, d’abord à l’Opera Workshop de l’UCLA, puis à la Music Academy of the West, à Santa Barbara (), où il rencontre →Herbert Graf. Il devient son assistant () et collabore étroitement avec lui jusqu’à sa disparition (). Régisseur de scène à l’→Opernhaus de Zurich (), il y signe ses premières mises en scène d’envergure, notamment Amahl und die nächtlichen Besucher de Menotti (), puis il assure la création de l’ouvrage burlesque Blackwood & Co. d’→Armin Schibler () et la première en allemand de la comédie musicale Carnival! de Bob Merrill (). Il dirige aussi l’une des rares représentations, dans la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, de l’opéra Le Prophète de Giacomo Meyerbeer (). Sous la direction d’Herbert Graf, il travaille ensuite pendant dix ans au →Grand Théâtre de Genève, successivement en qualité de régisseur général puis de chef metteur en scène (). Il y monte ainsi en moyenne quatre ouvrages par saison, dont Wozzek d’Alban Berg (), la première en français
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