Scarpitta (Jean-Paul)

Opera director / Member of the Foundation Executive Committee

Practically everything Jean-Paul Scarpitta did started when he met people. When he was 14, he crossed paths with Ghislaine Themar, a star dancer. He applauded her, filmed her and followed her to New York when she joined George Balanchine’s City Ballet. Then he met director Giorgio Strehler at the Opéra de Paris. This art-history and dramatic-arts student was 19 when he set up a music and dance festival in the Sens synodal palace courtyard. From then on, Jean-Paul Scarpitta never quite stopped escorting his fétiche artists through every expression channel he could find, from a 37-portrait series for television (on Liv Ullmann, Charlotte Rampling, Rudolf Nureyev and others) to feature-length films including Désir (1985) with Marisa Berenson and Ghislaine Thesmar and, La Malaimée (1995), which he wrote with scriptwriters François Truffaut and Jean Aurel. He also organised an exhibition to celebrate Vogue Magazine’s 60^th anniversary (where he made friends with Richard Avedon), and staged operas (which is what this eclectic artist spends most of his time doing today) such as Médée featuring Fanny Ardant, Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher with Sylvie Testud (2005) and Stravinsky’s Œdipe Roi starring Gérard Depardieu (2003). He has worked with “Gérard” several times and describes him thus: “He elevates whoever he’s talking to up to his level, saying, ‘you’re as worthy as I am.’ He would make a good missionary.” Jean-Paul Scarpitta is also a missionary in his own particular way. He spent 15 years running the Armand Hammer Foundation in Paris and London, awarding scholarships to students from disadvantaged backgrounds (“Following Danielle Mitterrand’s advice, we were in touch with secondary schools in left-wing as much as right-wing councils.”). “I was fortunate to grow up in an amazing family. We were five children. I went my own way but they adored me just the same. They didn’t understand me, but they loved me. I remember that ‘awakening’ and awareness I got from reading. I was wrapped up in my piano and thoughts. I wasn’t doing well at school. All I wanted to do was get away from them all and go and climb trees. I was the contemplative sort, and music was always there: Françoise Hardy, France Gall, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones as much as Schubert, Beethoven and Mozart. My ‘companion’. I gravitated towards directing opera little by little. That opened up my mind: that was how I understood how important it is to let go of your ego and just how dangerous narcissism could be,” he confides. His next stops are Verdi’s Nabucco in March 2011 at the Rome Opera run by Riccardo Muti, and Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at the Opéra National de Montpellier in June.