Faculté de musique de l’UdeM | An Effective Evening at The Opera

by Alexandre Villemaire

The 2024-2025 season of the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Music is currently in full swing. Perched on the slopes of Mont-Royal at the top of the famous Vincent-d’Indy Avenue hill, around a hundred people gathered in Salle Claude-Champagne on Saturday to hear the current crop of young singers. It was a great opportunity to discover them in preparation for their production of Hansel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921), to be presented at the end of February. The students were accompanied by pianist/conductor Robin Wheeler and Alona Milner.

A sober evening, presented in gala form without extravagant presentation or complex staging, but not lacking in quality moments. In this operatic evening, several excerpts from works covering a vast spectrum of the operatic repertoire were presented. From German Romantic opera to bel canto, operetta and Baroque opera, it was a seamless transition. This panorama allows us to see the different performers in action, in a variety of styles, lyrical expressions and character incarnations. Verdi’s Witches from Macbeth opened the evening. With piercing eyes, the sopranos and mezzos of this chorus presented a biting, menacing reading of this page of verismo. The few choral numbers that graced the program were among the evening’s most appreciated for their strength and technical precision. The overall sound was enveloping, the articulation just right and precise. A case in point was the excerpt from Mozart’s Idomeneo “Placido è il mar… Soavi Zeffrini”, where the balance of voices between the numerous women’s voices and the five men’s voices was soaring, balanced and complementary to Marie France Eba Koua’s singing.

In terms of individual voices, several performances caught our attention. Among the men’s voices, baritone Élie Lefebvre-Pellegrino stood out for his beautiful, resonant, full, round and slightly brassy low register, coupled with good stage presence. His interpretation of Nilakantha’s aria from Léo Delibes’ Lakmé was assured and committed, as was his performance as Count Almaviva in the duet “Crudel! Perche s’ignora” duet from The Marriage of Figaro with Kevisha Williams. However, his passages in the upper register still need to be stabilized. Fellow singer Théo Raffin offered some of his best stage performances in Don Giovanni’s Leporello (“Sola, sola in buio loco”) and Romeo and Juliet’s Mercutio (“Mab, la reine des mensonges”). In both cases, his interventions were both interpretative and vocal. The only bass in the cohort, Andrew Erasmus delivered the difficult aria “O du Mein Holder Abendstern” from Wagner’s Tannhäuser with finesse and sensitivity.

As for the female voices, Maëlig Querré (mezzo-soprano) made a good impression in her role as Romeo from Bellini’s I Capuletti e i Montecchi. Her agile, assured voice with a sonorous low register complemented Nicole Ross’s Giulietta, who, despite great strength and agility in her high notes, reached the end of her range by the end of the aria. Cloée Morisette and Clotilde Moretti were equally sparkling in an excerpt from Carl Maria von Weber’s Freischütz. Another name to remember is mezzo-soprano Julie Boutrais. She distinguished herself in the duet from Moneverdi’s opera L’Incoronazione di Poppea, performed with Salomé Karam. Playing respectively King Nero and his lover Poppea, the two singers perfectly captured the passionate feelings and intoxication evoked in “Signor, oggi rinasco” as Nero announces to Poppea that she is to be his wife. Julie Boutrais also brought the evening to a close with her warm, embodied voice in Dido and Æneas‘ final aria “When I am laid in Earth”, followed by the final chorus from the same opera. A moment that sent shivers down our spines.

If we have to make one slight criticism of the concert, it’s the lack of detail in the program. A gala-style singing recital featuring a succession of arias, duets, trios and choruses from different periods and styles allows the singers to express themselves in a variety of roles and characters, and at the same time introduces the audience to protagonists and operas with which they may be less familiar. It would be a good idea to provide a little context for these works, to situate them for the audience. The excerpt from the trio “Je vais d’un cœur aimant” from Hector Berlioz’s opera Béatrice et Bénédict is a good example. Maëlig Querré, Maïlys Arbaoui-Westphal and Anne-Sophie Gagnon-Metellus performed this excerpt from a little-performed opus well, and would have deserved a little program note to appreciate it even more.

acadie / Country Folk / Punk Rock

Marathon | P’tit Belliveau at MTELUS, Baptism of Fire

by Sami Rixhon

First MTELUS in the sights for Jonah Guimond, aka P’tit Belliveau. After four Club Soda gigs in one year, it was time to get down to business. The real deal. And as the challenge was met with flying colors by the merry Acadian troupe, oh yes.

P’tit Belliveau is now entering the big leagues, finally treading the boards of this Montreal temple. A far cry from the young, fiery Jonah Guimond of Les Grosses Coques, who confined himself to his sometimes limited country-pop sympathies. The native of Baie Sainte-Marie, Nova Scotia, has reaffirmed himself all the more in this particularly audacious artist, who makes a mockery of industry codes and is devilishly entertaining.

P’tit Belliveau kicks off his show with Depuis que la neige a fondu and Moosehorn Lake, from his first two projects. Alternating throughout the show between banjo and electric guitar, he presents a majority of songs from his new album, the namesake P’tit Belliveau, exploring pop-punk corners à la Blink-182 as much as metal or rap avenues. Bold, I tell you.

“If there’s one person in the room who’s not singing, I’ll take my music off Spotify and stop the show,” he warns, before performing the gritty Mon drapeau acadjonne viens d’Taïwan. There’s everything you want in a P’tit Belliveau concert. Want a laugh? Check out the projections behind the band, featuring everything from exercising frogs to John Deere tractors. Want to be baffled? Let yourself be surprised by a baffling extramusical interlude where a wrestler, out of nowhere, comes on stage to fight the band, only to be brought down by a shirtless P’tit Belliveau – “Never fuck with P’tit Belliveau. Ever,” he adds afterwards. Prefer to move? Go to the front of the stage, among his faithful followers throwing mosh pits to absolutely anything. There’s something for everyone.

Hats off to the accompanying musicians, particularly talented and entertaining with their wacky choreography and their mandolin and fiddle solos galore. Two members of the delirious punk quartet Peanut Butter Sunday (Normand Pothier and Jacques Blinn) have been playing with P’tit Belliveau on stage for some time now, which may explain the rock bent Guimond is increasingly exploiting in his compositions.

The Acadian artist closes the regular part of his show with RRSP/Grosse pièce, from his second album, then returns to the stage for an excellent encore mixing children’s songs (L’arbre est dans ses feuilles), new material (L’église de St. Bernard) and old hits (J’aimerais d’avoir un John Deere and, of course, Income Tax). The audience wants more and more, forcing the band to come back and jam for a few minutes for a second, seemingly impromptu encore.

P’tit Belliveau reiterated several times in the show how grateful he is to count on the unfailing support of his public and his chums, for so many years (something he already said in Demain). Thanks to you, P’tit Belliveau, for proposing such a singular offering in a local industry that’s often too standardized. Quite simply, one of today’s finest Franco-Canadian artists.

Punk Rock

M pour Montréal : PAN M 360 présente Fucktoplut + Pust

by Rédaction PAN M 360

Ouverture des portes: 22h00
Spectacle: 23h00
Pust (23h)
Fucktoplut (Oktoplut) (23h45)

Doors: 22:00 pm
Show: 23:00 pm
Pust (11 pm)
Fucktoplut (Oktoplut) (11:45 pm)

POUR ACHETER VOTRE BILLET, C’EST ICI!

Ce contenu provient de M pour Montréal et est adapté par PAN M 360

Alternative Rock / chanson keb franco

M pour Montréal : Karkwa + invité.e.s

by Rédaction PAN M 360

Portes: 18h30
Spectacle : 20h00
Karkwa

Doors: 6:30pm
Show : 8pm
Karkwa

POUR ACHETER VOTRE BILLET, C’EST ICI!

Ce contenu provient de M pour Montréal et est adapté par PAN M 360

chanson keb franco / Country Folk / Punk Rock

M pour Montréal : P’tit Belliveau + Malaimé Soleil

by Rédaction PAN M 360

Portes: 19h00
Spectacle : 20h30
Malaimé Soleil (20h30)
P’tit Belliveau (21h30)

Doors: 7 pm
Show : 8:30pm
Malaimé Soleil (8:30 pm)
P’tit Belliveau (21:30 pm)

POUR ACHETER VOTRE BILLET, C’EST ICI!

Ce contenu provient de M pour Montréal et est adapté par PAN M 360

Hip Hop

M pour Montréal : Badi + Jethro + Ogun

by Sami Rixhon

Portes : 22h00
Spectacle: 23h00
Ogun (23h)
Jethro (23h40)
Badi (00h20)

Doors: 10 pm
Show : 11 pm
Ogun (11pm)
Jethro (11:40pm)
Badi (0:20pm)

POUR ACHETER VOTRE BILLET, C’EST ICI!

Ce contenu provient de M pour Montréal et est adapté par PAN M 360

Alternative / Pop indé

M pour Montréal : CHARLIE HOUSTON + LUBALIN + GOODBYE KARELLE + DJ YUKI

by Sami Rixhon

Portes : 19h00
Spectacle : 20h00

Goodbye Karelle (20h)
Lubalin (21h)
Charlie Houston (22h)
DJ Yuki

Doors: 7pm
Show: 8pm

Goodbye Karelle (20h)
Lubalin (21h)
Charlie Houston (22h)
DJ Yuki

POUR ACHETER VOTRE BILLET, C’EST ICI!

Ce contenu provient de M pour Montréal et est adapté par PAN M 360

DJ set

M pour Montréal : Cléa Vincent (DJ SET)

by Rédaction PAN M 360

Spectacle: 00h00
Cléa Vincent

Show: 00:00am
Cléa Vincent

POUR ACHETER VOTRE PASSE, C’EST ICI!

Ce contenu provient de M pour Montréal et est adapté par PAN M 360

Folk / Folk Rock / latino / Rock / Trip Hop

Coup de coeur francophone – Gabriella Olivo + Daria Colonna

by Michel Labrecque

Bain Mathieu, a former public bath converted into a multi-purpose venue, is hosting Coup de Coeur Francophone shows for the first time this year. On November 13, a double album launch for women took place.

First, Gabriella Olivo, for her six-song EP, A Todos Mis Amores, released on October 25. Gabriella grew up in Stoneham, near Quebec City, with a Mexican mother and a father “blond and blue-eyed from St-Bruno”, she says on stage. Her mother always spoke to her in Spanish. She therefore grew up with two cultures, despite the ambient homogeneity of this Quebec City suburb.

Her young musical career is steeped in this bi-culturalism: she sings in French and Spanish, often in the same room. The result is ambient folk tinged with rock and seasoned with a little Mexican and Latin sound.

In this sense, it’s reminiscent of Kevin Johansen, whose mother is Argentinean and father American, and whose career in Spanish and English has been very successful in Latin America.

Gabriella Olivo lives in Quebec. But A Todos Mis Amores is her most Mexican opus, having been made in Mexico City with producer Santiago Miralles. Although still with a meditative folk-rock sound, this mini album is more sprinkled with Latin influences than her previous album, Sola. After all, Mexico City knows how to blend rock and Latin influences.

All of which is to say that this EP is a great listen, and so is the live version, enhanced by some of the earlier tracks. All the more so as Gabriella shares personal anecdotes and stories on stage that give context to the songs. “Right now, the world is really fucked-up,” she quipped, alluding to recent political news. By way of consolation, she offered us the magnificent song No te Olvides De La Luz. How to find the light in the darkness.

The young Mexican from Stoneham is one to watch. And, as she said: “Vive le Coup de Coeur Hispanophone”, although she also sings in French. And it’s going to stay that way,” she told me after her performance.

With Daria Colonna, we enter a completely different universe. Le requiem des sirènes saoules is the title of her debut album, released in May. Quite a program.

“It’s my first show,” she confesses on stage at Bain Mathieu. Daria Colonna, 35, is well known as a poet. Her latest collection, La Voleuse, earned her nominations for several poetry prizes.

So we went along to this stage premiere, six months after the release of the album. Musically, we’re in a mix of trip-hop and synthetic rock, with more acoustic episodes.

Daria Colonna opens her book on her multiple states of mind, with a focus on the “intense” woman, to whom she dedicates an ode. It’s about desires, anxieties, a dangerous life, thirsts, in every sense of the word. Clearly, Daria Colonna is not lacking in intensity. She knows how to write lyrics. On stage, I found the results less convincing than on record.

But she is a musician and singer in apprenticeship and gestation. We can perceive an original, independent trajectory, where words will always be privileged. Which is not always in the zeitgeist. And that’s good.

Classical / Modern Classical / période romantique

OSM | Alpine Symphony: When Woods Become Sherpas

by Alexis Desrosiers-Michaud

These are the last concerts this week for the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) before its forthcoming tour, which will take it to the finest concert halls in Europe over the next few weeks. For the occasion, it was the turn of Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony to be broken in, conducted by Rafael Payare.

As a curtain-raiser, the OSM also presented Jeden Baum spricht “Chaque arbre parle” by Iranian-Canadian Iman Habibi. According to the program note, this work would have had everything to gain from being included in last month’s OSM Beethoven Marathon. It ticks all the boxes of how the composition competition was presented at the concerts, or, roughly speaking, how the composer can express today the influence that Beethoven has had on his life. To take things a step further, it is written that the very title comes from one of Beethoven’s diaries. And that’s what we hear! Habibi skilfully uses the dramatic, country aesthetics of the Fifth and Sixth symphonies, without quoting them, in a tripartite structure, with agitated brass and percussion, but calmer strings and woodwinds. This leads to a grandiose, hopeful finale. In short, something more interesting than the two creations we personally attended at the Sunday, October 20 concerts. We can’t help smiling when we recall that the OM competition dates back to before the pandemic, and when we read that Jedem Baum spricht was premiered in 2020 as a commission from the Philadelphia Orchestra, which is conducted by… Yannick Nézet-Séguin!

24 hours before the concert, the OSM announced that Scriabin’s Piano Concerto would be replaced by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Third Concerto , still performed by Bruce Liu. The latter will thread the concerto with finesse and fluidity. He never forces, picks or over-stamps. His right hand is so agile that trills are almost imperceptible, and his nuances are breathtaking. Liu has the ability to suspend notes at the last moment to dampen a phrase or change character. The beginning of the second movement transports us into another world, with a comforting left hand and a melody barely touched by the fingers of the right hand. No one gave an explanation for the change of work, but this performance was well worth it.

The Alpine Symphony is impressive in terms of length (45-50 min.), dense instrumentation (abundant brass and percussion sections, unusual instruments) and thematic flourishes, but you have to delve into the details to really impress. With more or less 130 performers, playing loud is child’s play, but it’s not always easy to measure out the nuances. As Payare prioritizes the instrument family most likely to be buried, namely the woodwinds, everything balances out. As experienced guides, they were brilliant, individually and collectively. From the very first note, bassoonist Stéphane Lévesque and his colleagues set the calm mood of dawn, against a background of imperceptible violins. Then, new principal oboist Alex Liedtke distinguished himself in a distant solo. Later, the same Liedtke, with clarinetist Todd Cope and the legendary Timothy Hutchins on flute, literally had us on the edge of our seats on the eve of the storm, not quite sure when the sky was going to fall. The Post-GoldenElegy was even better. The abyssal gulf in orchestration (from full orchestra to intimate, chamber formation with woodwinds, horn and trumpet solos on organ pedal) doesn’t affect the playing in the slightest. The trap of excitement and agitation of the previous section is avoided, and we swim in a moment of zenitude. Throughout the symphony, the horns were present without being overpowering. In fact, they could have taken up more space in a few places, such as each time the chorale motif is repeated from the outset. The volume of the banda was good, and the horns made a real impact in their long Summit melody, but it wouldn’t have been as excellent without the contribution of the strings below, which dictate the phrase without releasing the tension in the long notes. In short, the Alpine Symphony may tell the story of an adventurer’s ascent alone, but this magnificent performance is the work of a collective perfectly aware of the role each must play to reach the summit.

Photo Credit: Antoine Saito

classique

OSM : Quatre violoncelles

by Rédaction PAN M 360

Laissez-vous émouvoir par l’intensité expressive d’un ensemble de violoncelles. Un quatuor de l’OSM vous propose des transcriptions et des œuvres originales du répertoire romantique français, de Chopin à Offenbach, combinant les sonorités à la fois graves et veloutées de leurs instruments.

Surrender to the expressive intensity of a cello ensemble. A quartet of cellos from the OSM performs transcriptions and original works from the French Romantic repertoire, from Chopin to Offenbach, combining the deep, velvety sounds of their instruments.

POUR ACHETER VOTRE BILLET, C’EST ICI!

Ce contenu provient de l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal et est adapté par PAN M 360

Contemporary Opera

Festival du Monde Arabe 2024 | Sainte Marine: a character and a opera between two worlds

by Frédéric Cardin

Saturday 9 November saw the premiere of Sainte Marine, an opera by Katia Makdissi-Warren (of the OktoEcho ensemble), with the support of Chants Libres, opera company directed by Marie-Annick Béliveau.

Listen to my interview with Marie-Annick Béliveau about the character of Sainte Marine and the opera itself (in French) :

The opera is described as immersive, which is apt given that the audience and the artists are dispersed in the same spheric shared space: the dome of the SAT (Société des Arts Technologiques) in Montreal. What’s more, the artists move through the audience, who are free (sometimes forced) to change places, sit or stand, depending on their interest in one musician rather than another. The dome itself serves as a screen for various projections during the show. Some are pretty (drawings of flowers, plants, trees), others touching (candles accompanying an introspective musical passage towards the end of the work), but too often they are limited to spurts of coloured lines or sketched shapes that seem to severely under-use the modern potential of digital visual art.

The music evokes traditional Maronite songs from Lebanon (think Sister Marie Keyrouz), as Sainte Marine lived in what is now Lebanon around the 5th century. The vocal score evolves with simple and above all modal lines carried by the amplified voices of Marie-Annick Béliveau, a mezzo-soprano who is sometimes asked to deviate considerably in addition to singing and narrating, and a trio of male bass voices, Sainte Marine’s ‘brothers’ in the monastery (she was a women posing as a male monk all her life). What we hear is mostly ritual or incantatory chant, virtually devoid of any harmonisation, except for some polyphonic writing for the trio of male voices. The effect is certainly sometimes trance-like, but above all emotionally stunted. There were a few times when I thought I would have liked a fuller drama.

Michel Duval, David Cronkite et Clayton Kennedy, basses
cr.: Camille Poirier
Sainte Marine, opéra immersif

The instrumental score is the one that spans the widest range of styles and effects. I particularly liked the flutes proposed by the composer: the classical traverso and alto played by Marie-Hélène Breault, and above all the traditional iranian nay superbly played by Aymen Trabulsi. They are the anchor in this distant world of the Levant, both culturally and temporally. Then the percussions (very good Bertil Schulrabe) and piano (Pamela Reimer) disguise the cultural authenticity initially sketched out with interventions that are sometimes contemporary, elsewhere jazz or slightly pop. All the stylistic personalities described so far occasionally overlap, but more often than not come together in a grouping for which I hesitate between the qualifiers of curious or happy. It’s a bit like tasting a dish that I like, but wonder what’s missing to make it really tasty.

The quality of the performers is undeniable, even if I felt Marie-Annick’s voice was a little fragile, even hesitant, in a few passages. Perhaps this was intentional, to better embody the character? Once again, I hesitate.

Sainte Marine is a very interesting proposition, but it will need some aesthetic refinement and tighter dramatic writing (both musically and on stage), and then some je-ne-sais-quoi still to be determined, to enable it to reach its full potential.

Line up :

Marie-Annick Béliveau, mezzo-soprano; Marie-Hélène Breault, flutes; Aymen Trabulsi, nay; Pamela Reimer, piano; Bertil Schulrabe, percussion; Michel Duval, David Cronkite and Clayton Kennedy, basses

Katia Makdissi-Warren, conception and composition

Marie-Annick Beliveau, conception, libretto and artistic direction

Charlie Poirier-Bouthillette, video design

Normal Studio, immersive production

Flavie Lemée, lighting design

Marianne Lonergan, set and costume design

Angélique Wilkie, dramaturgy