Pelléas et Mélisande is the first co-production between the Abu Dhabi Festival and the Paris Opera. What drew you to this particular opera, and what makes Debussy’s masterpiece a compelling choice?

When Abu Dhabi Festival started exploring collaboration with the Opéra national de Paris, Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande caught our attention because it resonated at many levels with what our Festival stands for: we walk the path that connects legacy to innovation, and we’re always excited by interdisciplinary exploration.

Claude Débussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is all about innovation: it is a major turning point in the history of opera. And reinterpreting it three decades after it was last brought to life by the Opéra national de Paris seemed like the kind of challenge that we like at Abu Dhabi Festival: turning legacy into innovation.

The fact that Wajdi Mouawad would be the one reinventing this masterpiece added to our excitement. First, because we have always been very interested in his work as young visionary. Second, because of his background which leads me to the second point I raised: interdisciplinary exploration. Although, Abu Dhabi Festival is a music Festival at its core, it remains a celebration of culture in its broadest sense, and we’ve never shied away from raising the bar and mixing things up with visual arts, ballet, poetry. Pelléas et Mélisande is of course a musical masterpiece, but it also is a work full of dramatic tension, psychological complexity. The atmosphere and mood it creates is so powerful that one can also transform it into something very visual. This seemed like the perfect playground for a profoundly imaginative artist such as Wajdi Mouawad, and we believed in his capability to drive this major work into new exciting unchartered waters, drawing from so many other artforms.  

Why is supporting innovative interpretations of classical works and enriching the operatic repertoire important to the Abu Dhabi Festival?

Heritage is not static. For heritage to live on, it must be revisited, questioned, and brought into dialogue with our time, the evolution of the arts and audiences. Without this process, heritage would become a relic, forgotten on a shelf, and crumbling to dust when you touch it. By supporting innovative interpretations of classical works, we make sure that this legacy lives on.

The perpetual revisiting of such classics allows these masterpieces to keep on doing what they do best: captivate our imaginations, and hopefully inspire us to create new works that will one day become tomorrow’s heritage, which we are also interested in. Our commissioning new works might seem to be far away from your question about innovative interpretations of classical works, but it isn’t. Artistic creation is a constant conversation between legacy and innovation: when we support the reinterpretation of legacy works, we bring the inspiration of masterpieces to a new generation. When we support new works and innovation, we also believe it will create new spaces for classics to be reborn.

Wajdi Mouawad is a case in point: he has been a major innovator as a playwright and a stage director and actor. His tireless innovation has created new horizons that allow him, today, to give a new life to a classic. Abu Dhabi Festival is all about keeping that pendulum running.

How does your partnership with the Paris Opera nurture the Abu Dhabi Festival’s commitment to fostering artistic excellence?

The Abu Dhabi Festival has built a reputation for its dedication to artistic excellence. And partnerships are always a great way to keep the flame of this dedication alive. Each partnership challenges our methods, expands our understanding of culture, artists, audiences.

And of course, the Opéra national de Paris is a dream partner in this respect: it is one of the world’s most revered cultural institutions, it has relentlessly reinvented itself over the centuries and it has never compromised when it comes to artistic excellence and integrity.

Working hand in hand with Paris Opera is working with the living memory of the operatic arts and with the future of opera all in the same time! And that can only inspire us and push us further in our quest for artistic excellence. However, I also believe that a lasting partnership is always a two-way street. I acknowledge with deep gratitude and respect all that we are learning from our work with the Opéra national de Paris, but I also am certain that it is learning from us, since we are one of the first cultural institutions of the Arab World. The Opéra national de Paris nurtures universality. And universality is not only speaking to the world - it is listening to it. And ADMAF and Abu Dhabi Festival bring the voice of Abu Dhabi, of the UAE and of the Arab World to the Opéra national de Paris.

In this sense, I feel our partnership does nurture our commitment to artistic excellence, but it also nurtures the Opéra national de Paris’ search for universality and global relevance. And this ongoing conversation is also what the Abu Dhabi Festival is all about: building intercultural bridges, engaging in cultural diplomacy.

Our collaboration with the Opéra national de Paris is a first of its kind in the Arab World. And in saying this, I don’t only say it with pride - although I do. I also say it because a first, by definition, takes all of us out of our comfort zone and forces us to explore new territory. It is true for Abu Dhabi Festival, but I also believe it is true, in its own way, for the Opéra national de Paris.

Last but certainly not least: our partnership started with the co-production of Pelléas et Mélisande. But it doesn’t end here. Where will our partnership take us next? It will go where the on-going conversation between Abu Dhabi Festival and Opéra national de Paris takes us. It will go where artists and their creations take us. Ultimately, what I do know is that this partnership is here to stay, and that I can’t wait to see where it will take us, the artists we support, and the cross-cultural dialogue we have started.