Gerard Mortier

Gerard Alfons August, Baron Mortier (25 November 1943 – 8 March 2014) was a Belgian opera director and administrator of Flemish origin.

[3] His first major administrative post was as the general director of La Monnaie (De Munt) in Brussels from 1981 to 1991, where he was credited with artistically rejuvenating the company.

In 2003, he offered an ambitious season of 23 productions with 129 performances in 15 spaces, along with additional concerts, a fringe festival and what promises to be an astonishing installation of a Bill Viola video spectacle, Five Angels for the Millennium, inside a mighty, gorgeously restored gas tank in Oberhausen.

Mortier had a "current of spirituality meant to infuse these cathedrals of industry", and emphasized a French subtext in 2003, compared to a German one the year before.

[8] In November 2008, Mortier resigned when it became clear that the board would not give him the money needed to produce a meaningful slate of opera productions.

[10] While in New York, he had already commissioned a new opera, Brokeback Mountain, with the American composer Charles Wuorinen and a libretto by Annie Proulx, who wrote the original short story on which it is based.