Peter Eotvos, evocative modernist composer and conductor, dies at 80
“His music may be rigorous, but his gentle, quiet spirit gives his work its inimitable character and pathos,” says American opera director Yuval Sharon, who directed a 2016 production of the opera by Mr. Eotvos from 1998, "Tri Sestri". Vienna, he said in a note. Calling that opera, based on Chekhov's play “Three Sisters,” “undoubtedly one of the greatest works of our time,” Sharon said it was only while working with Eotvos that “he realized how much of his emotional feeling life is invested in work.”For the otherwise reserved Mr. Eotvos, music was the vehicle for expressing that inner life. “In everyday life I'm not a dramatic person at all,” she said in a 2020 documentary about him. “Perhaps this veiled dramatic trait can only come to the surface if it has a job to do.”In the ...