Bernard Foccroulle

Bernard Foccroulle was born in Liège in 1953. He embarked on an international career as an organist in the mid-1970s, performing a vast repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to the contemporary era. He has given dozens of world premieres and has specialized particularly in the organ works of J.S. Bach. As soloist, he has recorded over 40 CDs, including the complete works for organ of Bach and Buxtehude.

He continued with his career as a performer during his tenure as Director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie between 1992 and 2007. There he engaged as musical director first Antonio Pappano and then Kazushi Ono, and tackled a huge repertoire, from Monteverdi to contemporary works. He welcomed eminent stage directors, including Luc Bondy, Robert Wilson, Klaus Michael Grüber, Robert Lepage, Willy Decker, and Richard Jones, increased the number of artistic residencies – Anne Teresa De Keermaeker, Philippe Boesmans, Fabrizio Cassol – and opened opera up to the widest-ranging and most contemporary artistic disciplines.

In 1993 he founded the association Culture et Démocratie which campaigns for the participation of the widest possible public in cultural life. From 2001 to 2009 he was Vice-President then President of the Opera Europa network, which links around one hundred opera houses in thirty European countries.

Since January 2007 he has been Director General of the Festival international d'art lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence. He has brought in some of the world’s greatest theatre directors, such as Patrice Chéreau, Peter Sellars, Robert Carsen, Dmitri Tcherniakov and Katie Mitchell; world-famous conductors, such as Sir Colin Davis, Sir Simon Rattle, William Christie and Essa-Pekka Salonen; rising stars of the younger generation, such as Leonardo Garcia Alarcón, Jérémie Rohrer, Pablo Héras-Casado and Raphaël Pichon; and arranged residencies for prestigious orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. He has placed emphasis on new work, regularly putting on world premieres, such as Written on Skin by George Benjamin. He has strengthened the local roots of the Festival d’Aix by setting up an education service and a socio-artistic programme; these lead many activities aimed at raising awareness and developing artistic practice in schools and other groups throughout the region. He has set up the European Academy of Music and in 2011 created the European Network of Opera Academies to support the training of young artists and the circulation of musical works around Europe. He has also opened the Festival up to other musical traditions, in particular those from Mediterranean lands.

Since 2010 he has been Professor of Organ at the Conservatoire royal de musique in Brussels.

Ha has published two books: Entre passion et résistance [Between Passion and Resistance], conversations with Pierre Delrock (Labor) et La Naissance de l’individu dans l’art [The Birth of the Individual in Art] in collaboration with Robert Legros and Tzvetan Todorov (Grasset).

He composes mainly for organ and voice. Works include Am Rande der Nacht [At the Edge of Night], a cycle of seven settings for soprano, choir and orchestra of poems by Rilke (CD Cyprès), and a cycle of melodies after poems by Verlaine.

He is Doctor honoris causa of the University of Montreal.