Louis Erlo

Louis Jean Marie Camerlo was born on 26 April 1929 in Lyon, France. His uncle, the singer Paul Camerlo, was director of the Opéra de Lyon. He trained as an electrician at the Lycée de la Martinière and studied at the Beaux-Arts before entering the opera house. He later became known in the opera world as Louis Erlo.

His schooling was technical rather than musical: he learned electricity at the Lycée de la Martinière in Lyon and then studied fine arts. His real training came inside the Opéra de Lyon, where his uncle appointed him fifth stage manager. French Wikipedia says he joined in 1950 and learned alongside the conductor Otto Ackermann. Tributes stress that he climbed every rung of the theatre, from technician to director.

Erlo's first productions as a director were for the Festival de Lyon at the Roman theatre of Fourvière. From 1957 he staged Gluck's Alceste (with Paul Camerlo), Berlioz's Les Troyens (1958), Reyer's Sigurd, Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila and Offenbach's La Belle Hélène (1959), Wagner's Lohengrin (1962), Strauss's Elektra and Verdi's Aida (1963), Tannhäuser (1964) and The Magic Flute (1966). In 1962 he directed Cocteau and Thiriet's Oedipus Rex with Jean Marais and actors from the Comédie-Française. In 1970 he staged Fauré's Prométhée at Fourvière, with choreography by Vittorio Biagi and Désiré Dondeyne conducting.

Erlo became director of the Opéra de Lyon in 1969, succeeding his uncle, and stayed until 1995, the longest tenure in the house's history. In his first year he founded the Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon with Vittorio Biagi as an independent company. His "Opéra Nouveau" brought new working methods, new commissions, rediscovered baroque works and a stronger place for theatre alongside singing, aimed at a younger and wider audience.

In the early 1980s he invited Jean-Pierre Brossmann to be co-director. Their partnership created the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon, brought in the conductor John Eliot Gardiner and produced nearly 80 audio and video recordings. Erlo's productions there included Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea, Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, Don Giovanni, Parsifal, Chabrier's L'Étoile, Offenbach's Les Brigands (with Alain Maratrat) and Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges (1989, with Kent Nagano). The rebuilt house designed by Jean Nouvel opened in 1993. In 1996, a year after he left, Lyon became the first regional house in France to be named an Opéra national.

From 1973 to 1979 Erlo led the Opéra-Studio de Paris, a company for training young singers founded in the Rolf Liebermann era at the Paris Opera. It helped launch French singers including the baritone Jean-Philippe Lafont.

In 1982 he succeeded Bernard Lefort as director of the Aix-en-Provence Festival, a post he held until 1996. His first season brought the first staging of Rameau's Les Boréades, on 21 July 1982, with John Eliot Gardiner. Later came Hippolyte et Aricie with Jessye Norman (1983), Mozart's Mitridate (1983) and La finta giardiniera (1984), Ariadne auf Naxos (1985), Campra's Tancrède (1986), Lully's Psyché (1987), Der Rosenkavalier (1987), The Fairy Queen with William Christie and Adrian Noble (1989), The Love for Three Oranges (1989), Les Indes galantes (1990), Castor et Pollux and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream with Robert Carsen (1991), and The Rake's Progress (1992). The renovated Théâtre de l'Archevêché was handed to him by culture minister Jack Lang in June 1985. His last festival, in 1996, closed with Handel's Semele.

He was married to Janine Camerlo. They had a son, Rodolphe, and two grandsons, Guillaume and Grégory. His sister Jeannette and her husband George Demule died before him. The family's death notice was published from Olmeto in Corsica and Écully, near Lyon, and thanked the doctors, nurses and home care team who looked after him in his final period.

Erlo believed opera was living theatre. The Opéra de Lyon said he embodied an inventive, demanding and popular idea of opera in the tradition of Jean Vilar, Roger Planchon and Jean Dasté, and that he left behind the conviction that opera reinvents itself through the daring of artists and their meeting with audiences. He valued training young singers, and surrounded himself with collaborators such as Guy Coutance, Numa Sadoul and Alain Maratrat. In a 1982 interview with Le Monde he said Aix must remain the home of operatic innovation.

Erlo is credited with transforming the Opéra de Lyon from a municipal theatre into an international house, and its structure, ballet company and orchestra still reflect his work. At Aix he helped make the festival one of the main centres of the baroque revival, with the Les Boréades and Tancrède recordings released by Erato. Singers and directors who gained early chances under him include Natalie Dessay and Robert Carsen. Days after his death the Opéra de Lyon dedicated its new Love for Three Oranges to him.

Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur. Member of the 1983 international jury that selected the architect of the Opéra Bastille.

The Opéra de Lyon released close to 80 audio and video recordings during the Erlo and Brossmann years, among them The Love for Three Oranges conducted by Kent Nagano (1989) and Chabrier's L'Étoile conducted by John Eliot Gardiner. The INA, France's national audiovisual archive, holds footage of his 1970 Prométhée rehearsal at Fourvière, the 1985 renovation and reopening of the Théâtre de l'Archevêché in Aix, and his 1995 work with the Opéra de Lyon's young artists on songs by Prévert and Kosma.

The Festival d'Aix-en-Provence notes that the end of his tenure as festival director was overshadowed by the festival's financial difficulties.

Louis Erlo died on 2 October 2026 at the age of 97, according to his family's death notice in Corse-Matin. The Opéra de Lyon, the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence and the French press paid tribute from 4 October. A religious service was held on 6 October 2026 at the church of Santa Maria in Olmeto, Corsica, followed by a private cremation. The cause of death has not been made public.