Influential Swiss theater director Luc Bondy has died from complications due to pneumonia. He was 67.
The Odeon Theater in Paris, which Bondy ran for the past three years, made the announcement of his death Saturday.
Bondy was a force at theaters throughout Europe, including Berlin’s Schaubuehne, the Salzburg Festival and Vienna’s Wiener Festwochen, which he led until 2013. He also directed operas and films in a career that spanned more than four decades.
“Although ill from his early years, he gave up nothing, working tirelessly, suffering but still tirelessly at work,” French President Francois Hollande’s office said of Bondy, who was born in Zurich and raised in France. “He exemplified by his personal story and his outstanding work the culture of Europe.”
Austrian Culture Minister Josef Ostermayer called him “a special citizen of the world who worked at all the major stages … The theater world has lost a member of the avant-garde and an artistic free spirit.”
Bondy had eclectic tastes and his productions ranged from the classics and the modern.
“I hate directing people who have to prove their imagination every second,” Reuters quoted him as telling a magazine interviewer.