\n<\/p>\n
He was educated at the University of Oxford, where he directed a production of Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cTimon of Athens\u201d in 1977. A few years before, Mr. Audi had led a group that purchased an early-19th-century building in the Islington neighborhood of London that, over its varied history<\/a>, had housed a display of Egyptian mummies and served as a music hall, a Salvation Army facility and a factory that made carnival novelties.<\/p>\n By the time Mr. Audi discovered it, it had fallen into disrepair. But he saw its potential as a performance venue, and he led a fund-raising effort to renovate it and reopen it as a theater with a few hundred seats. (He would later link his interest in repurposing unusual structures to growing up in Lebanon, a country that lacked theaters.)<\/p>\n Through the 1980s, the Almeida developed a hip reputation, with homegrown and touring productions that offered early boosts to the careers of now-prominent artists like Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage, Phelim McDermott, Deborah Warner and Simon McBurney. The Almeida International Festival of Contemporary Music became renowned as a presenter of new and commissioned operas.<\/p>\n During his tenure at the Dutch National Opera, beginning in 1988, the house also became a hotbed of commissions and progressive stagings, including collaborations with visual artists like Anish Kapoor and Georg Baselitz. There, Mr. Audi directed the Netherlands\u2019 first full production of the \u201cRing\u201d and a cycle of Monteverdi\u2019s operas.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing about Pierre was, it wasn\u2019t going to be traditional, old-fashioned opera,\u201d said the opera administrator Matthew Epstein, who advised Mr. Audi during that early period. \u201cIt was the expanding of the repertoire both backward \u2014 toward Handel and Monteverdi, which he directed and became famous for \u2014 and forward, toward so much contemporary opera.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Audi is survived by his wife, the artist Marieke Peeters<\/a>; his children, Alexander and Sophia; his brother, Paul Audi; and his sister, Sherine Audi.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n