The China Mail - Ted Huffman, the New Yorker aiming to update top French opera festival

The 48-year-old credits his interest in classical music to his babysitter who encouraged him to sing as a child, leading to turns in church choirs.

Brought up by parents who preferred country and folk music, he only discovered opera at age 12 once his distinctive voice had landed him regular gigs on Broadway, then the Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera.

In his first appearance as a young shepherd in a concert performance of Puccini’s "Tosca", he remembers "a man singing incredibly well right in front of me," he told AFP in an interview.

It turned out to be Italian maestro Luciano Pavarotti.

But his passion for performing gradually gave way to an appetite for directing and writing.

After a degree in the humanities from Yale University, he moved on to San Francisco's Merola Opera Program before setting off to make a name for himself in Europe with stints at the Berlin Staatsoper and the Royal Opera in London among others.

His promotion to run the Aix-en-Provence Festival, one of the most prestigious summer meetings for opera lovers internationally, occurred in October last year when he was unveiled as the successor to Franco-Lebanese director Pierre Audi.

Audi died suddenly in May aged 67, with the decision to appoint Huffman seen as a moment of generational and creative renewal.

- 'Opportunity' -

The annual gathering in the sunny south of France is familiar territory for Huffman who has presented five productions there since 2012.

He names its "incredible atmosphere", as well as "the freedom given to artists" and its "audiences that want surprises" as reasons for his long association with the festival and interest in the position.

He plans to "highlight contemporary creation while balancing it with the great artists of the repertoire," he told AFP as rehearsals wrapped up for his latest production, Jules Massenet’s "Werther" at the Opera-Comique in Paris.

"We need to redefine opera as a living art form, that means that we have to invest in new work, because you can't have an art form where the definition of the work is about the past," he explained.

"In order to attract a new public you have to talk about today, to have works that speak about today."

He wants around half of the programme to be given over to telling "new stories".

"We need to give young artists the opportunity to explore" the genre, he added.

Also a librettist, Huffman has collaborated with British composer Philip Venables, creating the operas "Denis & Katya" (2019) about voyeurism and the internet and "We Are The Lucky Ones" (2025), about the baby-boomer generation.

Onstage, he likes to leave room for improvisation and prefers understated productions.

"I am not a minimalist, but I am looking for a kind of maximum engagement with text and meaning," he explained.

While the lost-making festival was ordered in 2024 to implement a financial recovery plan, Huffman insists that its budgets "has to stabilise and we have to work in a fairly tight way."

"But that’s not going to stop us from creating wonderful things," he promised.

H.Ng--ThChM