The 9th, the superb Art Deco hall of the Eaton Centre, which enjoyed its heyday in the previous century, is finally being put to good use again. The Mother Christmas program presented on Tuesday, December 16, by mezzo-soprano Kristin Hoff, soprano Jacqueline Woodley, and harpist Juliette Duguay was an opportunity for opera and chamber music lovers to enjoy a lovely selection of Christmas carols with their families.
Minuits Chrétiens was the gateway to this trio performance. From then on, we observed the two-voice polyphony of the mezzo and soprano.
The late Gilbert Patenaude, his son Julien Patenaude, and Juliette Duguay, all connected to the Patenaude family as is Jacqueline Woodley, designed the arrangements for this delightful program, which is just classical enough to stand out from many similar works, and just pop enough to appeal to those unfamiliar with opera.
After Minuit, chrétiens, take a little trip through the Great American Songbook with the bilingual version of White Christmas composed by Irving Berlin. In keeping with this Montreal penchant for bilingualism, Silent Night, a tune created in 1818 and composed in Germany by Franz Xaver Gruber, blends into Night of Silence, a tune composed in 1981 by Daniel Kantor to fit into the first song that everyone in the Western world knows so well.
As M3F is a collective dedicated to opera and classical singing that promotes female (and non-binary) composers and librettists in its production choices, this Christmas recital was somewhat of an exception to its mission, although two female composers were identified in well-known works: Augusta Holmès for Trois anges sont venus ce soir (Three Angels Came Tonight, 1884) and Gloria Shayne Baker for Do you hear what I hear? (1962).
Returning to classical music, we were treated to an excerpt from Handel’s unmissable Messiah (He shall feed his flock / Come unto Him), followed by Ramon Gomis’ Spanish-language A la Nanita, Interlude, Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, and Manuel de Falla’s Nana. During the performance of Benjamin Britten’s instrumental piece, played exclusively on the harp, the children in the audience were invited to come closer to the artists and experience the music even more deeply.
Except for Mariae Wiegenlied by Max Reger, the rest of the program was clearly more pop-operetta, with lyrical versions of Greensleeves (traditional), Marie-Noël by Robert Charlebois, Happy Christmas by John Lennon, Petit Papa Noël by Henri Martinet, and Noël, c’est l’amour by Norbert Glanzberg. For this last part, the singers’ children joined them to sing the songs from the last part of the program, arranged by the late Gilbert and Julien Patenaude. The mothers and their offspring were joined by the fathers (including Julien Patenaude, Jacqueline’s husband) for a heartfelt finale, the famous Gloria des Anges dans nos campagnes, which was also sung in unison by the audience.
Jacqueline Woodley and Kristin Hoff shared the main melodies of these songs, as well as a second melodic line that produced a successful counterpoint in most of the cases observed on Tuesday. It should be noted that the soprano had a more prominent role in the main melodies, but the harpist’s understated accompaniment was entirely appropriate in this eminently festive context.
