Ghislaine Thesmar, Isabella Rossellini, Fanny Ardant, Sofia Coppola, Susan Graham, Andrée Putman, Gérard Depardieu, Riccardo Muti, Françoise Sagan, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Giorgio Strehler, Rudolf Nureyev … The career of Jean-Paul Scarpitta – film-maker, opera director, exhibition organiser, portraitist – is a series of famous encounters. Ever the man of passion, he has now joined the Carla Bruni-Sarkozy Foundation.

Do you remember what it was that first got you involved in art ?

I come from quite a privileged background. Because of my father, who had a senior official position in north Africa, I grew up in Algeria. He instilled in me what it means to live among other people. From a very young age, I learned what racism was. Or rather what it wasn’t. I was lucky enough to grow up in an extraordinary family. We were five children. I had a long childhood. And from this extended childhood, I have managed to keep that sense of joy, that sense of inexhaustible optimism. I was different from the others, but I was loved just as they were. Not understood perhaps, but loved. I remember having my senses awakened by reading and by my mother’s sublime voice. She was constantly singing, singing for all time. I involved myself with my piano, with my thoughts. At school I was not such a great student. My main thought was to get away from everyone else, to go climbing trees or swimming in the sea. I was very contemplative, and I always had my music – Françoise Hardy, France Gall, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart. My ‘companion’. Gradually I got into opera directing. That opened my eyes, and made me appreciate how one must learn to escape from one’s own self, how narcissism can be such a dangerous force.

You have excelled in several fields : film-making, portraiture, opera. Was it all simultaneous ?

Yes. And the common thread is the way I was drawn towards the women I worshipped. I had a passion to put these faces on display. First there was a dancer, Ghislaine Thesmar. When I was 14, I paid five francs to go to the opera. I threw her flowers from the balcony. One day she became a star. I went backstage, and she said to me : « I know who you are. You are the one who sends me flowers. » I could see the music developing in her, the way her steps were formed from the notes of a piano. She was always seeking out that interior movement of life – what I was referring when I spoke about my mother. I saw her relationship with George Balanchine – who I later filmed. I saw her work with Jerome Robbins, who choreographed West Side Story. I saw the way she brought the classical ballets up-to-date. When she played Odette-Odile in Swan Lake, it became a modern ballet. She gave meaning to every gesture. When she danced, it was as if she was speaking to us with words. Never had I seen such inventiveness, such radiance, such a contrast of human emotion – all the tenderness of a luminous but tormented soul. Up to the very last day that she danced, I came to watch and admire and throw her my flowers. She awoke in me the urge to feel for myself that special atmosphere of the theatre. Originally I wanted to be a conductor, but I don’t think I had enough will-power.

Could it have been someone else who triggered your passion ?

No, I don’t think so. But thanks to her, I met (opera director) Giorgio Strehler. He was at the Paris Opera. I sat down to watch him at work and I didn’t move, I was so entranced. He asked me : « What are you doing there ? » I was never directly taken on by Strehler, but I was part of his team, in the background. Then one day he said he wanted me at his side. That was when I saw what I had to do. I had to follow him. And ever since that is simply how I have worked. Was it inspiration or instinct ?

It all comes from a long period of observation ?

The way I discovered my trade makes me think that one needs a certain maturity in order to take on certain composers. For example Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle. One has to have endured and appreciated human solitude, pain, the basic problem of desire between man and woman.

So are some works of opera broached too early ?

These days in the word of opera, everything is done straightaway. For my Carmen, I waited for the right moment to make a barefoot contessa of her in the person of the magnificent mezzosoprano Marie-Ange Todorovitch. Carmen is a dazzling character. She embraces humanity. For me, it was like a step into the cosmos. Coming back to Bluebeard, there for the first time I discovered that a man can also be interesting in opera. Here was an attractive persona, who dares to reveal his inner being. The blood which spreads over the stage is his. Every day more of it flows. Even though he suffers, the blood gives him warmth too. That kind of masochism is a universal characteristic, don’t you think ?

You know these works intimately. But how does the ordinary person, who is no expert in the field, find his way through the world of classical music ?

There are millions of people out there who have never seen or heard an opera. And yet give them the opportunity, they know how to do it. I have seen so many people rise spontaneously to acclaim a masterpiece, the endless bravos ! Don’t try to tell me they didn’t feel the power. In order to really understand the great works, sure you can’t have enough expertise and knowledge. But when it is just about feeling it, an opera is the same for everyone. Molière was quite right when he read his plays out to his cook. There are specialists and of course some great musical heroes today, like – and above all – the maestro Riccardo Muti. His Verdi’s Requiem is unforgettable, to weep for. It’s playing to packed houses in Saint-Denis just like all his concerts do around the world. Riccardo is one of those people who makes you want to carve the word ‘art’ into your seat.

It’s important to involve not just people, but places too. These concerts are at the Saint-Denis basilica, where the kings of France are buried.

And it is the role of the state to organise free concerts. At the Aix-en-Provence opera festival, the tickets are very expensive. Whereas the Montpellier summer festival, held in partnership with Radio France, which takes place at roughly the same time – it’s open to everyone. It’s 80 percent free of charge. There’s a venue with 2,000 seats, another with 1,000 and another with 700. They’re packed. Everyone goes, young and not so young, from every social class.

We’ve spoken of Mozart, Bartok, Bizet and Verdi. Are there any living composers in your pantheon ?

But Mozart has never been more alive! The Marriage of Figaro – based on Beaumarchais’ play – is totally relevant today ! Look at Beaumarchais — a man who even before the Declaration of the Rights of Man believes that all men are born with the same rights. Is he not a revolutionary inspired by a love of justice and liberty just like so many of his heroes ? He explains everything. Then take Balzac. His views on society, its cruelty and its perversity, today are like a prescription for us to rise above ourselves and fight our worst instincts. And I cannot but cite other great visionaries such as Stendhal, Proust, Dostoyevesky. Must we not always seek what we can find in the darkness, in the depths of the human soul ? An actor like Depardieu can draw on the visionary power of authors like these. With his instinctive understanding of human society, he looks the other man in the eyes and says : « You and I are the same. »

I agree entirely. But now we’re in the 21st century.

Quite sincerely, I believe that true creation stopped with Schoenberg. Even though there has since been Messiaen, Henze, Dutilleux. Great artists, of course ! And the younger ones — Nicolas Bacri, Bechara El-Khoury, Kristof Maratka, Philippe Schoeller, Marco Antonio Ramirez. Many of them submit their operas for production. René Joering, who was head of music at Radio France, is another conductor worth considering. Among other works, last year he wrote a remarkable opera Scènes de Chasse (Hunting Scenes) and some beautiful quartets which were sung by the great Hildegarde Berhens. We absolutely need to do more to promote the creation of new works and seek out young composers.

One has the impression that more and more music is being produced. And yet it is hard to remember who is making it. Do you think that one thing that is lacking today is a way of detecting new talent ?

There is a lack. Everything remains very ephemeral. In the days of Mozart — the man who really invented Europe by living in Germany and Austria and writing his librettos in Italian – the theatres used to commission works of music, operas and symphonies. It was part of their job description. But concerning modern-day performers, I am not sure I agree with you. One does remember their names. Right now there is that miraculous young pianist David Fray, an artist who is really in flower. And his harvest is going to be astonishing, of exceptional beauty, of incomparable suppleness, harmony and grace. His Bach and Schubert are essential listening. A master conductor, without a shadow of a doubt.

Apart from music and reading, what are your other passions ?

I harbour an irresistible urge which compels me to pay obeisance to nature, flowers, roses, trees. When I read, I do not wear headphones. We need to re-learn silence. Lately I have been reading a biography of Louis XIII, the latest Kundera and La Mauvaise Rencontre by Philippe Grimbert, which I annotated liberally. I regularly re-read Proust, who was such a music-lover and who laid the whole world before us in his À la recherche du temps perdu. Also Balzac, Zweig, Chateaubriand. I also like reading memoirs, to see how humans have progressed. I have just put on a production based on Marie-Antoinette, who people still tend to think of as being an essentially frivolous character. She was called a traitor, a whore of the Republic. But at the end of her life, she showed a magnificent nobility of spirit, transcendentalised by her death. It’s interesting to note how many composers gravitated around her : Gluck, Puccini, Salieri. She met Mozart when she was seven. He was almost taken on as the choirmaster at Versailles. Luckily it never happened. Otherwise he’d never had composed what he did. It is odd that Marie-Antoinette was not more interested in Mozart, who was always so joyful in spite of the day-to-day tragedy that he lived through – the tragedy that he renders so sweetly for those who want to hear and understand !

Do you think we need to bring language up-to-date in modern productions, the way Abdellatif Kechiche did for example when he modernised Marivaux in his film L’esquive.

I think it is an option, yes. I have just put on a production of Dido and Aeneas, an opera which was created in 1689 for a girls’ boarding school. We used the services of a junior choir from Montpellier, to which we added a boys’ choir. The 34 choristers and the eight soloists were all from different social backgrounds. They played their own music for me, and showed me their dance styles. There was a lot of rap, short words. They asked me about my reading. Who was Shakespeare ? They had no idea that he gave women’s roles to men, that the witches were acted by boys. They did not know that it is a theatre of cruelty. Since then they have been sending me text messages. They want to put on Romeo and Juliet.

In the same way that the bible was re-translated, do you think we should re-work the classics to make them more accessible ? Or would it be a great loss to simplify Le Misanthrope for example?

On this question I am quite conservative. On the other hand, changing the setting I agree with. Even though I have to say I am not a great fan of the way they always seem to be staging La Traviata in Germany, invariably with washing-machines and lavatories all over the place. But a clean, uncluttered stage-set can bring the focus back to the universality of the text. Don’t forget art follows tradition. What did Mozart do after all ? He drew inspiration from his elders, even plagiarising his contemporaries for Don Juan. And his music could not be more universal !

Can a person be helped to become an artist ?

A person who is destined to be an artist will become an artist. But there are things which trigger the process. It could be an encounter, or a scholarship. Education, culture and knowledge are what is permanent in a civilisation . Today more than ever we need to find refuge in art. Before, they used to pretend that the answer was television – where you get to be an artist in three months then are forgotten just as quickly. Aim for the universal by seeking others. That is fundamental.

« Cultural products » that seek out immediate profit are increasingly common in the market-place.

These days, everyone yields to every temptation, to this urge for immediacy which you speak of. If you show only one colour to people, then they will love that colour and that colour alone. Maybe it is ambitious to want to put the whole palette on display. Yet don’t forget that the museums, the operas-houses and the theatres are all full today. And not just with any old rubbish. People appreciate in a different way. I am not speaking here as an opera director, nor as a simple observer of the rich panorama of human life, but as a passionate defender of art in general, and of art as a social tool. Theatre, for example, is one of the most expressive and most useful instruments for building a country. It is a barometer which records a country’s rise or decline. Theatre which is sensitive, focused, whether it be tragedy or vaudeville, can totally transform the sensibility of a people in just a few years. On the other hand, theatre that is degraded, whose wings are weighed down with lead, will ruin a people and send it to sleep. Hence the responsibility of the people in charge of television, the media and the rest. Art in all its disciplines is a school of tears and laughter. It is a tribune where man can champion the perhaps discredited ways of old, or elicit by living example the eternal laws of the human heart.

What needs to be done today ?

Go to the places that have been abandoned by culture ; talk to teachers ; put on performances ; show that there is more than one kind of music, that different people have different ideas. Defend memory. Fight the impoverishment of the French language. It’s a wide gap to be bridged, and needs the help of an artist or a writer or a philosopher. Maybe it is utopian, but this is the road to follow. I think of those associations which for years now have been bringing opera into the poor suburbs : Verdi, Mozart, Cherubini, Beethoven. Some people there are discovering they can sing ; education is bearing fruit ; life is becoming sweeter, more comprehensible. Even people who do not want to take part are curious to listen and they too find their lives getting calmer. We could do the same with the great classical authors, or with moderns like Koltès. What does it all come down to ? One must seek out beauty, wherever it may be. One must seek it out with inexhaustible generosity and a total disregard for social considerations. The atmosphere of our times is certainly confused, but not so confused as to obscure the purpose of this Foundation : to usher in a brighter dawn. We are going to help, after a certain fashion, to unravel the knot and make sure that art, education and access to knowledge are no longer relegated to a second degree of importance. There should be no social divisions in culture. We are all duty bound to make it as accessible as possible. Take the example of The Magic Flute. Mozart was banking on the naïveté of the ordinary burghers of Vienna, precisely because he hoped that such people would turn out to be more receptive than the cultivated elite. The elite wants to understand everything all at once and is not ready to receive a progressive revelation delivered by means of symbols whose inner force is far greater than any intellectual interpretation given to them. So, down with categories, down with power struggles, with pointless opinions. Let us be exacting, terrible and terrifying – if I may make so bold !

You see yourself as a transmitter of knowledge ?

A long time ago I was in charge of the Foundation belonging to the great American philanthropist Armand Hammer. We handed out funds to national museums, and scholarships to young students from poor neighbourhoods. Under the invaluable advice of Danielle Mitterrand (widow of the late president François Mitterrand) , we got in touch with secondary schools in various towns, left-wing towns and right-wing towns alike. The school-heads pointed out their most gifted students, and we sent them to American universities. One became a philosopher ; another got a job at Lazards bank ; many went into marketing. They all wanted to make great careers for themselves. None became an artist. And yet I would so much have liked that. That is what a Foundation is for : climbing trees to hand out fruit.