Peter Sellars first gained fame by reinterpreting repertoire works and plunging into the political and social events of our time. Through the great works of the repertoire, particularly those from the 20th century, he tirelessly questions our society, reflects on our present condition and our difficulty living together. At the end of the 1980s, he staged an iconoclastic interpretation of the Mozart / Da Ponte “trilogy” in which he set Don Giovanni in Harlem, Le Nozze di Figaro in an apartment in Trump Tower and Cosi fan tutte in an American drugstore. He maintains a close working relationship with the composer John Adams and even gave the latter the idea for his first opera, Nixon in China. He also collaborates regularly with Kaija Saariaho (L’Amour de loin, Adriana Mater, and Only the Sound Remains). In 1992, he directed Olivier Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise at the Salzburg Festival. The work was restaged a few months later at the Opéra Bastille. Already, for that production, Peter Sellars filled the stage with dozens of televisions. In 2005, he directed Tristan und Isolde at the Paris Opera, in collaboration with Bill Viola. In this production, video became an integral and essential component of the performance, taking on a ritualstic role close to the initiation ceremony yearned for by Wagner.