Pierre Jourdan left us without having been able to assist to the season 2007-2008 that he had prepared.
A great name of the lyric and TV world disappeared.

He had studied piano with Alfred Corteau in the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris and, very young, he became the assistant of Gabriel Dussurget for the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

Then, he met Jean Cocteau with whom he created the ballet during the festivities of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier wedding.

He also was a precursor: he first recorded live operas for cinema and television as “Tristan and Isolde” with Jon Vickers and Birgit Nielson, “Norma” with Montserat Caballé, “Fidelio” with Jon Vickers again and so many others.

During the sixties and the seventies, he directed many television shows and films for the cinema as “Phèdre” with Marie Belle and Marie Marquet, “I am a dancer” with Rudolf Noureev and Joan Fontaine, the very famous TV show “Discorama” with Denise Glazer, “Musiques au Coeur” with Eve Ruggieri.

Man with convictions and free, he failed in love with what he will define later as “my second country”, Greece and its ambassador of liberty during dictatorship, Melina Mercouri. He directed some films and documentaries with her making a terrible portrait of the Greek regime. He has been threatened during years and forbidden to enter to the Greek territory.

In 1986, he was looking for a theatre for his Theâtre Français de la Musique when one told him that it exists a theatre in Compiègne that only few know the existence.
He immediately failed in love and decided that it will be there and nowhere else.

In 1991, the Théâtre Impérial is inaugurated, propelled by the Théâtre Français de la Musique and its artistic argument and strictness budgetary.
The man who did to the 19th century French repertory justice never stopped amazing creating plays unjustly forgotten and discovering young lyric artists as Laurence Dale, Nathalie Dessay, Laurent Naouri, Inva Mula, Annick Massis, Armando Noguera or musicians as Cédric Tiberghien, Pascal Godard, François Chaplin and many others.

Pierre Jourdan not only did justice to an unjustly forgotten repertory but he also tried to make the public understand that the lyric plays are alive and that one can create new plays as he did with Stavros Xarhakos and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt creating a spiritual lyric drama “Le Visiteur”.

He did not have time to materialize the future great world creation, “Cyrano & Roxane” by Jean Rostand, adapted by Jean-Claude Carrière and co-adapted by himself, music composed by Stavros Xarhakos. He beard this project until the end leaving us to take care about it and to materialize it.

The team which surrounded with him since years trained by him will do everything it can to implement not only this project but continuing to try to reach the artistic objectives without betraying his memory.