Spotted in 2006 after a memorable showing of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, Russian director and set designer Dmitri Tcherniakov, 54, has rapidly established himself on international stages as one of the most exciting and inventive figures of his generation.

At the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, after a controversial Don Giovanni, which reshuffled the Mozartian cards in 2010; Georges Bizet's Carmen, a kind of couples therapy, in 2017; and then, in 2023, a subversive Cosi fan tutte of old lovers, he returns with a novel project: to stage Gluck's operas Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia in Tauris in a single evening, in the form of a diptych. We caught up with the Moscow native on June 11, between rehearsals at the Grand Théâtre de Provence.

I first came to Aix as a spectator of Mozart's Don Giovanni, staged by Peter Brook in the late 1990s. At the time, I had not yet directed a single opera. In 2006, a Russian music lover asked me to record Eugene Onegin for her. Staged at the Bolshoi, the production had not yet been seen in Europe – it was eventually in 2008, at the Palais Garnier in Paris – but people were talking about it, and I subsequently learned that Bernard Foccroulle, the former director of Aix-en-Provence, was interested in seeing it. But I think it all started with Gerard Mortier [then director of the Opéra de Paris], who had come to see the premiere, before scheduling the production in Paris. In between, I was invited to Aix, in 2007, to discuss future projects. Three years later, I staged Don Giovanni there. I've been coming back at regular intervals, a rhythm shaken up by Covid-19. So, after Cosi fan tutte in 2023, I'm presenting Gluck in what will be my 50^th opera production.

It was a proposal I made to Pierre Audi when he was appointed festival director in 2018. Gluck has always been part of my universe. In the early 1980s, in Moscow, I was an opera-mad teenager. It was still a very Soviet era, the country was closed, and we knew very little about what was going on in Europe. At the time, the Bolshoi presented Iphigenia in Tauris in Russian, with very pompous dances and choreography. But this production made an impression on me, and I managed to find a 33-turn LP from the GDR, recorded in the 1970s, in a second-hand store in Moscow. It was a version of the score re-orchestrated by Richard Wagner, sung in German, with Anna Moffo, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Trudeliese Schmidt. I listened to it over and over until it produced nothing but an abominable crackling sound. I didn't even know Iphigenia in Tauris existed.

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