On Saturday, Luc Bondy dies at the age of 67. Luc Bondy worked as a producer of both plays and operas at the prominent festival of music and drama - Salzburg Festival, and in 1985 he became the director of the Vienna Festival.
Bondy was born in Zurich but was raised in France. Luc Bondy, who was trained in Paris with the theatre teacher Jacques Lecoq (best known for his methods on physical theatre, movement, and mime). The Swiss director was a towering figure at theaters including Berlin's Schaubuehne (famous theatre in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin) and the cultural festival in Vienna - Vienna's Wiener Festwochen, which Luc Bondy led until 2013.
Luc Bondy, who was the director of the latest version of Tosca, by Puccini, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, also directed operas and films in a career that spanned more than four decades.
The office of the French President Francois Hollande stated, "Although ill from Luc Bondy's early years, the director gave up nothing, working tirelessly, suffering but still tirelessly at work. "Luc Bondy was exemplified by his personal story and his outstanding work in the culture of Europe."
Josef Ostermayer - Austrian Culture Minister, called Luc Bondy "a special citizen of the world who worked at all the major stages...The theatre world has lost a member of the avant-garde and an artistic free spirit."
The work ranged of Luc Bondy goes across the classic and the modern.
The Swiss theater and film director once stated in an interviewer, "I hate directing individuals who have to prove their imagination every second."
In addition, Luc Bondy's career also spanned decades of theater productions in London, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt and elsewhere in Europe.
The Odeon Theatre (one of France's six national theatres) expressed their admiration to Luc Bondy for the director's "creative genius, erudition, his love for the actors and the audience, his humanity and his liberty."
