06-05-2025
Pierre Audi obituary: influential opera director
Pierre Audi, an ebullient and bull-necked Beirut-born Oxford graduate, spent a year in the 1970s hunting for a London venue to use as a theatre. Eschewing 'abandoned cinemas which looked like mosques, derelict town halls which resembled La Scala and an agricultural hall like the Vatican', he finally stumbled across a decaying former warehouse in north London.
Built by public appeal, the Islington Literary and Scientific Institution originally opened in 1837. Later it was a music hall, staged cock fights and wrestling matches, served as a Salvation Army citadel and became a showroom for Beck's British Carnival Novelties run by Malcolm Heaysman, a transvestite murdered by a stepson who had stumbled across his secret life.
Harry Secombe, Ned Sherrin, Robert Stigwood and Steven Berkoff had
