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The 2025 edition of the Festival Classica has gone big, very big indeed: it has asked Marie-Nicole Lemieux to take on the role of Carmen in a complete rendition of the opera, a first in Canada! Elsewhere, Marie-Nicole has told her family: “If you want to see me in Carmen, this is the place to do it!’’ And yet this is a character she has mastered on European stages since 2017!
On 7 June 2025, at the co-cathedral of Saint-Antoine-de-Padoue in Longueuil (south shore of Montreal), the celebrated singer will be joined by an impressive vocal team: Emmanuel Hasler (Don José), Suzanne Taffot (Micaëla), Étienne Dupuis (Escamillo), Catherine St-Arnaud (Frasquita), Florence Bourget (Mercedes), Dominique Côté, Thomas Vinals, Dion Mazerolle and Pierre Rancourt! If that’s not a five-star line-up, I don’t know what is. Then there’s the Festival Orchestra conducted by Jean-Marie Zeitouni, the ArtChoral ensemble conducted by Mathias Maute and a ‘’spacing’’ (mise en espace) by regular performer Isabeau Proulx-Lemire. Mise en espace (for which I don’t have an accurate translation if not ‘’spacing’’) means a kind of interesting in-between, “the best of both worlds”, as Marie-Nicole Lemieux puts it in the attached interview. Although there is no full stage like in regular scenic opera, there are still movements and digital projections (by Lumifest en cavale). It’s much more dynamic than a simple concert performance with fixed soloists in front of lecterns. For Marie-Nicole, it allows for a more intimate and direct relationship with the conductor, because there’s no intermediary of costumes and sets, and you can ‘concentrate on the words’. I invite you to listen to my interview with Marie-Nicole to find out more about her very personal vision of the character of Carmen.
