#METOO EXILE UZAN HAD IMPACT ON CITY SCENE
Former Opéra de Montréal director: ‘I am of the ’60s generation, which is not an excuse’
The Opéra de Montréal opens its 2018-19 season on Saturday with Verdi’s Rigoletto, the first of four productions in Salle Wilfrid Pelletier of Place des Arts. Twentyfive years ago, a schedule of seven productions was underway, six of them in Pelletier and one in the Théâtre Maisonneuve.
Assessing the number of shows and spectators in 1993-94 requires more math than I can muster, but most operas then ran for six performances, not four.
At any rate, it is clear the OdM in those days was a robust company under the general and artistic directorship of Bernard Uzan.
This summer, Uzan was named in a #MeToo exposé in the Washington Post and promptly stepped down from the New York talent agency he founded after leaving Montreal in 2000. Uzan has resigned (with his wife, soprano Dianna Soviero) as codirector of the Young Artist Studio of the Florida Grand Opera.
Back to 1993. The OSM did not look too shabby that fall. The orchestra opened its main subscription series with Liszt’s substantial and seldom-heard Dante Symphony. In October, the OSM occupied the Church of St. Eustache with a big cast and chorus to record Berlioz’s immense opera Les Troyens, an undertaking that earned all concerned a Grammy.
Did I mention the conductor was Charles Dutoit? This conductor has not had a good year. His only known podium appearances in 2018 have been a concert performance in June of Strauss’s Salome by the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and a program last Sunday at the Septembre Musical Montreux-Vevey with the European Philharmonic of Switzerland and his ex-wife Martha Argerich, who has proven sympathetic to his plight. Dutoit’s fortunes appear to be on the rise: He has been named principal guest conductor of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the oldest orchestra in Russia. Still, his career is a shadow of what it once was.
That the two leading purveyors of classical music in Montreal should have been run by men whose names are now written with asterisks is either a remarkable coincidence or testimony to the tolerance of misconduct in the city. Given the reputation of certain leading figures in the English theatre scene in the 1990s, there might be something to the latter theory.
But the gist of contemporary comment on #MeToo in the arts stresses the dynamic of then and now, the differences between a decade when the arrogance and appetites of artistic directors were still accepted (or at least tallied alongside whatever good they were doing) and a time when no abuse of artistic power is countenanced and the “good” ledger of all transgressors is essentially reset at zero.
Uzan was always a controversial figure, outrageously frank and unlikely to seek consensus when he made up his mind. A 1993 Gazette feature titled “Tyrant at the Top?” pointed out that no employee of Opéra de Montréal other than Uzan held the title of director. Individuals complained of rudeness. Rumours proliferated of soloists and conductors who would never return.
The Union des Artistes, which was negotiating a contract for the chorus, issued a statement denouncing the Tunisian-born Frenchman’s attitude. In 1999, the late André Bourbeau, former Quebec finance minister and then a sitting MNA, wrote letters to Montreal newspapers drawing attention to what he regarded as Uzan’s prejudice against Canadian singers.
Artistic results could be uneven and reviews prickly. But the decade seems in retrospect a golden age, as Soviero, the unofficial prima donna, developed a loyal following that permitted the mounting of such underthe-radar verismo vehicles as Umberto Giordano’s Fedora and Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur.
What critics and reporters did not have to write during the Uzan era were depressing stories about the economic condition of the company. A prodigious salesman of OdM stagings, for which he generally took credit, Uzan enhanced revenues through rentals and co-productions. He also reduced expenses by phasing in the per-service Orchestre Métropolitain (rather than the salaried OSM) as the main pit band for the company.
The fact that the finances of the OdM began to deteriorate soon after Uzan’s departure might seem to cement his reputation as a tough but effective manager. Now 73, he is more likely to be remembered as a minor power broker who could not (or did not) control his worse impulses in the presence of women.
Most of the Uzan allegations in the Post exposé (which took two staffers months to prepare) are of propositions made over dinner. There are two allegations of contact, one from 1986 and one from 2011. In one case, a mezzo-soprano reports that Uzan started badmouthing her as an artist after she resisted his advances. The general implication is that sexual cooperation was likely to be rewarded.
These anecdotes (the details of which Uzan denies) are comparable to rumours afloat in the 1990s, although it needs to be noted that some of the stories circulating in Montreal were of consensual liaisons.
Uzan seems to be aware his personal style is no longer tenable.
“I come from a very different culture, I am of the ’60s generation, which is not an excuse, but simply a fact, and I have made my mistakes throughout my life,” Uzan wrote to clients after the Post story appeared.
Even before the exposé, Uzan hinted his career was drawing to a close.
“I don’t know how to behave, because I don’t know how it will be taken,” he told Celeste Landeros of the Miami Herald in January.
If Uzan’s alleged misdemeanours sound similar to those of which Dutoit has been accused — and keep in mind neither has been charged with a crime or been the subject of a lawsuit that we know about — their relative achievements are not really comparable. However reluctant Dutoit-haters are to admit it, the Swiss conductor revolutionized the OSM.
Without Dutoit, there would have been no Decca recordings and no momentum to build the Maison symphonique. There would have been no invitation to Kent Nagano to appear as a guest conductor in 1999 and, more relevantly, no orchestra of international calibre to attract him in 2006.
Uzan was not in Dutoit’s class, even if he has joined the conductor in the circle of the media inferno reserved for alleged #MeToo aggressors. Unlike Dutoit, he failed to construct an organization that could function effectively without his authoritarian (and arguably abusive) style of leadership.
Now Uzan is another #MeToo exile. But not one that should be denied a place in the history of the arts in Montreal.