International style: after a string of triumphs at some of Europe's leading houses, Olivier Tambosi makes his Met debut directing the company's new Jenufa.

"We know that he liked to eavesdrop on people's conversations, even if he could not understand the words--the subtle melody of their speech would tell him more about the person than words could ever do," says Olivier Tambosi of Leos Janacek. The French-born, Austrian-educated director, age thirty-nine, makes his Metropolitan Opera debut this month with a new production of Janacek's Jenufa. "As a composer, he searched for the essential truth about himself, about life, about us as human beings. While many Romantic operas take the idea of `love' for granted and use it as a source of conflicts, the main questions Janacek poses in Jenufa are: what is love? Is love possible? How is it possible? How far may it go? We talk here about `love' in all different conditions: sexual love, religious love, love between mother and child, selfish love that takes what it wants and selfless love that gives everything. Jenufa is also about taking responsibility, about inner growing, maturing, developing one's character ... learning to live our life and [seeking] our little bit of happiness without hurting each other."

Tambosi first directed Jenufa at Hamburg State Opera (1998) and Covent Garden (2001), winning raves. "The intensity and truthfulness of the interaction between fully fleshed-out characters ... made this Jenufa an experience for which the word `overwhelming' is almost inadequate," wrote George Hall from London (OPERA NEWS, Jan. 2002). A Falstaff for Lyric Opera of Chicago (1999, with Bryn Terfel) was similarly well received; Tambosi returns to the Windy City for a new, all-star production of Un Ballo in Maschera next month. In April, he'll direct Covent Gardens new Luisa Miller.

Founder and (from 1989 to 1993) artistic director of Neue Oper Wien (described as Austria's first independent opera company) and later artistic director of Klagenfurt's opera company, Tambosi got his start at Vienna's Academy of Music and Performing Arts, where he studied opera staging, earning his degree in 1987. The next year, he worked with Gerhard Bronner, Austria's leading Kabarettist, at the famous Cabaret Fledermaus, and directed an "experimental" Carmen, starring mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager, in the tiny Theaterkistl. He describes a 1989 Bastien et Bastienne as his "first `real' opera production," mounted at almost the same time as his productions of Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and his own dramatization of Wilde's De Profundis. "Looking back, it seems a really strange combination!" he muses. Over the years, he's acquired a reputation for sometimes controversial innovation and often piercing insight.

"In my work, I try to see an opera not only as a director but also as the first ...