During the first twenty years of his career, he devoted himself to theater, and in 1997 he was appointed director of the Centre dramatique national des Alpes-Grenoble (the National Dramatic Center of Alpes-Grenoble). In the same year, he gave fresh impetus to his career with Orphée aux Enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld), the first lyric work of a long series of operas he staged in France and abroad: from the tons of the opéra bouffe by Offenbach, like Orphée and La Belle Hélène (The Beautiful Helen), or like Platée (Plataea) by Jean-Philippe Rameau, to the more tragic atmospheres of La Voix humaine (The Human Voice) by Poulenc, Le Château de Barbe-Bleue (The Castle of the Blue-Bearded Duke) by Bartók, and Pelléas et Mélisande (Pelléas and Mélisande) by Debussy.
In January 2008 Laurent Pelly was appointed joint director – along with Agathe Mélinand – of the Théâtre National de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées (TNT).
