Gabriel Dussurget
Gabriel Dussurget (1 January 1904 – 28 July 1996) was a French impresario and opera director. He was the co-founder of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, an annual summer opera festival in Aix-en-Provence, and served as its Artistic Director from 1948 to 1973. He also served as the Artistic Director of the Paris Opera from 1959 to 1972. He became known as the "Magician of Aix" for his work at the opera festival Biography Early life Gabriel Dussurget was born on 1 January 1904 in Aïn M'lila near Biskra in French Algeria. He attended public schools in Constantine and learned to play the piano. He moved to France with his parents shortly after World War I to receive treatment for malaria. He passed his Baccalauréat in Paris. Career He worked as a dancer in Paris in the 1930s. During World War II, he founded a drama school in Paris with his partner, Henri Lambert. His students included Jean-Louis Barrault, Ginette Neveu, Madeleine Renaud, Yvonne Loriod, Olivier Messiaen, Raymond Rouleau, etc. In 1945, shortly after the war, he established Les Ballets des Champs-Elysées, a Paris-based ballet company, with Roland Petit and Boris Kochno. A few years later, in 1948, he co-founded the Aix-en-Provence