Pierre Audi, Eminent Force in the Performing Arts, Dies at 67

He was educated at the University of Oxford, where he directed a production of “Timon of Athens” by Shakespeare in 1977. A few years earlier, Mr. Audi had led a group that bought a building of the early nineteenth century in the neighborhood of Islington de London that, on its varied history, housed an exhibition of Egyptian mummas and served a musical rental of a sals factory.

When Mr. Audi discovered it, he had fallen into poor condition. But he saw his potential as a place of action, and led an effort to increase funds to renew and reopen it as a theater with a few hundred seats. (Later he would link his interest in reusing unusual structures with growth in Lebanon, a country that lacked theaters).

During the 1980s, the Almeida developed a hip reputation, with local and tours productions that offered early impulses to the now prominent artists such as Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage, Phelim. The International Festival of Contemporary Music of Almeida became recognized as a new and commissioned operas presenter.

Duration of its mandate in the Dutch national opera, as of 1988, the Chamber also became a seedbed of progressive commissions and internships, including collaborations with visual artists such as Anish Kapoor and Georg Baselitz. There, Mr. Audi directed the first complete production of the Netherlands of the “Ring” and a cycle of the operas of Monteverdi.

“What happens with Pierre was that it was not going to be traditional and outdated opera,” said Opera Administrator Matthew Epstein, who advised Mr. Audi duration that early period. “It was the expansion of the repertoire both, towards Handel and Monteverdi, which he directed and became famous, and forward, towards so much contemporary opera.”

Mr. Audi survives his wife, Marieke Peters; His children, Alexander and Sophia; His brother, Paul Audi; and his sister, Sherine Audi.