It's always the old white men – the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence opens the festival season

In his penthouse, the Commendatore puts on a few crackling vinyl records. All Mozart canned music, sweetened by a sip of wine. Suddenly, the old man clutches his chest and falls, searching for support, tearing a curtain with him as he falls. Even before Simon Rattle raises his baton at the Grand Théâtre de Provence, the first stage death is reported. The shock is profound. Just a few weeks after the real-life cardiac death of its artistic director, Pierre Audi, in early May, the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence opens its season with a theatrical heart attack.

Audi still has this season planned for France's leading music festival and not only persuaded Rattle to conduct his first Mozart opera in Aix. He also won over British theater director Robert Icke from London's Almeida Theatre, whom he entrusted with his first operatic work. Icke turns "Don Giovanni" into a celebration of remembrance, a staged look back. During the overture, the dying Commendatore's entire life flashes before his inner eye on faded videos. He, as it turns out, was a bastard. A womanizer, a child molester, a cynic – much like the Don. What's more, the two are identical. Giovanni, too, soon lies dead on the stage. Everything that follows is a recapitulation.

The director's idea, not entirely new, doesn't work this time either: a double Don Giovanni, powerfully sung by Andrè Schuen, who sings half dead, half alive – and dies and sings and dies. This strains even the abstraction skills of an audience as experienced in director's theater as here in Aix. Especially since Donna Anna (brilliant: Golda Schultz) also appears twice, as an abused child and as a traumatized adult. There's no hesitation: bravos for the singers, boos for the direction. After all, Mozart's operas are sacred silverware in Aix, as they are among the competition in Salzburg.

In contrast, the luxurious performance of "La Calisto" at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché, under the open night sky, is a truly delightful experience. This Venetian work by Francesco Cavalli is one of the earliest operas and is being performed for the first time in Aix. Written a few years after Monteverdi's "Poppea," the piece takes a similarly taboo-free stance on the loose morals of the ruling class. It is prudently cloaked in mythology: Jupiter (Alex Rosen) is unfaithful, and Juno (Anna Bonitatibus) catches him. Whereupon the object of his desire, the nymph Calisto (Lauranne Oliva), is transformed into a bear and banished to the heavens as a constellation.

The young countertenor Paul-Antoine Bénos-Dijan shines in the role of the shy lover of the chaste Diana. The casting is, another hallmark of Aix, perfect even in the smallest roles. Conductor Sébastien Daucé has colorfully embellished Cavalli's score with the harps, wind instruments, theorbos, and trumpets of his Ensemble Correspondances. In her production, Jetske Mijnssen sleekly relocates the Venice of 1651, complete with Mount Olympus, to the Rococo period of Mozart's time. It looks good, has pace, and couldn't be more fitting. Only the father of the gods has nothing to laugh about in the end.

This summer, the baroque spectacle at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché will be juxtaposed with a rarity from the fin de siècle: Gustave Charpentier's opera "Louise." An aria from it, "Depuis le jour," has entered the repertoire of the great prima donnas. Elsa Dreisig rivals Callas in this performance. Her crystal-clear soprano emanates from long melodic arcs, and Dreisig also breathes life into the character of the little seamstress seeking happiness. In the original third act, Paris, the city of lights, plays a personal role, celebrated as an island of freedom and love. This musical picture alone is worth such a high-caliber revival. Christof Loy's direction creates a psychological family constellation—and a recurring theme: once again, an old white man (Nicolas Courjal) is abusing his own daughter.

Pierre Audi not only gave the Aix Festival its profile with the discursive depth of his productions. This also always included his courageous trust in the next generation. Peter Sellars, himself a perennial up-and-coming artist, touched on this movingly in his commemoration of the deceased, a "concert pour Pierre." This time, Sellars himself directed Sivan Eldar's chamber opera "The Nine Jeweled Deer." It is a world premiere with an improvisational, multicultural charm.

Nine soloists circle around five or six notes, which are embellished electro-acoustically by a keyboardist. The Indian-American singer Ganavya is touching. The audience is even allowed to sing along to some of the mantras. It's about Ganavya's grandmother's "Kitchen Orchestra" and a Buddhist fairytale deer from the second century who, just like her grandmother, responds to violence and betrayal with love and peace, in a woman's way.

In Oliver Leith's arrangement of "The Story of Billy Budd, Sailor," on the other hand, the cast is primarily young white men. Homosexual innocence is murdered, and reasons of state prevail. After all, war rages in Benjamin Britten's operatic parable "Billy Budd," on which the adaptation is based. Leith, however, cut the supporting chorus, along with several other things. Ted Huffman, also a frequent guest at the Zurich Opera, commands the economy of stage resources in an almost didactic manner. The singing is intense and beautiful, especially by Christopher Sokolowski in the role of Captain Edward Vere, a searcher for meaning. And yet, from beginning to end, the rich orchestral colors of the original are missing.

The festival in Aix is organized like a good wedding, with a rich bride: Alongside something borrowed, this year's offerings include something blue, something new, something old, and something controversial, all in the best possible quality. In addition to the future of the art form, Pierre Audi, the son of a banker, always had the institution's financing in mind. But he also knew that you have to take artistic risks if you want something to become something.

This essentially simple basic recipe is now being posthumously honored by the Birgit Nilsson Foundation, which awards a prize worth almost one million euros every three years for "extraordinary achievements" in the field of vocal art. The prize will be presented to a festival for the first time in October, a final tribute to its artistic director. Whoever succeeds Pierre Audi will have a tough job. A decision is expected before the fall.