When the curtain of Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier opens on Saturday, on The Magic Flute of Mozart presented by the Opéra de Montréal, it will be a long time since the institution put its major shows on hold.
“The Opéra de Montréal at Wilfrid-Pelletier: a premiere in 825 days! can we read in the invitation to The Magic Flute, as if it were a feat. So many institutions, including the Opéra de Québec, have reorganized since March 2020 to adapt and offer more flexible shows to their audiences and artists. The Opéra de Montréal (OdM) seemed very passive. What are the prides and regrets of its managing director, Patrick Corrigan, in his management of these long 825 days?
“We have more pride than regret,” Mr. Corrigan told the To have to. “We have deployed our resources so that artists can work and be paid during this period. The Atelier lyrique has experienced extraordinary opportunities with broadcast shows, rich in lessons on how to give greater influence to our artists. We managed to present two staged shows, Winter expects a lot of me and The Torch of the Night. We have advanced the development of new works, because we want to develop a particular brand based on the cultural assets of Montreal: three or four new operas are on the way. »
Before the pandemic, continues the director, “we also had the goal of developing ourselves in webcasting to share these new works with the province, which makes sense in relation to the funding we receive, but also so that the world understands that the OdM is a force in the field of creation and thus develops partnerships with the Francophonie. Concerts revealed the public’s appetite for the Atelier lyrique, which is now at the heart of the company. We have cultivated contact with our audience to the point that, this year, subscriptions were up 30%. »
We have deployed our resources so that artists can work and be paid during this period.
Regrets ? “I regret that it was difficult for everyone. It was difficult to work for the artists, without security. Our choices during the pandemic aimed to be more sustainable for the company than to present The Marriage of Figaro in distance and in semi-stage version. The fact remains that the institutions have been depositories of government aid to be redistributed to artists, particularly freelancers. “Opera broadcasts brought in 1,000 artistic fees, workshops for new works also provide opportunities, and we compensated artists for $1.2 million for productions that were postponed, even if we were in the event force majeure. So the support was as strong as if the programming had taken place”, explains Patrick Corrigan.
While many institutions have tightened their belts in North America to survive the storm, figures on charities released by the Revenue Agency of Canada (CRA) indicate that between the financial year which ended on August 31, 2019 and that ended on August 31, 2021, the permanent employees of the OdM increased from 17 to 23 (plus 14 part-time), and that the payroll increased by 12%. The number of employees paid more than 120,000 dollars has increased from 2 to 4. The 2020-2021 balance sheet also shows a surplus of 1.17 million.
And since then, the growth has continued. “We are at 27” employees, specifies Patrick Corrigan. “We no longer see any difference between Opéra de Montréal and Atelier lyrique, we give between 25 and 30 shows a year. We can’t just be in the big hall, because the canon from 25 years ago is no longer profitable. We can no longer target the operatic offer intended only for opera lovers. So, we had to decide on a large-scale planning. »
Asked to specify the destination of the non-salary expenditures of $3 million for the 2020-2021 fiscal year and the use of the unspent surplus of $1.2 million, the director of the OdM indicates that the surplus has been carried over to this year for the programming put in place this season. “Among this, he explains, there were broadcasting projects (supported by the Digital Ambition program) which cost us 1.5 million and were subsidized to the tune of 700,000 dollars. There are also deferred costs related to productions that are themselves deferred. It’s been a funny year to watch: it’s impossible to see what’s going on in the company by looking at this ARC data. »
Among the expenses, Patrick Corrigan counts the 1.2 million given to the artists plus, in particular, “broadcasts, expenses on rights holders and rental of sets or rights and the cost of The Magic Flute “.
A Flute at 2 million
“When we look The Magic Flute, we are talking about a cost of nearly two million”. Patrick Corrigan explains his choice of Flute of 2012 of the Opéra-comique de Berlin, signed by the Australian Barrie Kosky, rather than the productions of the Quebecers Barbe and Doucet (Glyndebourne) or Robert Lepage (Quebec), conceived for the Metropolitan Opera, but which New York finally rejected, as follows: “I saw Robert Lepage’s production in Quebec and I really liked it. But we had already programmed the Kosky that goes around the world,” says Corrigan.
Barrie Kosky, director of the Berlin Comic Opera, had commissioned this show from the English collective 1927 (Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt). Curiously, this production of the Collectif 1927 “in collaboration with Barrie Kosky” has now become “ The Magic Flute of Kosky”. Patrick Corrigan explains that “Barrie Kosky is a personality that we recognize, an important force in opera. We also needed his approval for certain things”. We therefore learn that this approval is aimed at the engagement of singers who have already participated in previous productions: “He wants the production to be representative of what he has put together”.
The starting point is very different. And we are going a long way! In an interview with the television music magazine KlickKlack, on BR-Klassik, the real designer of this magic flute, Suzanne Andrade, explained very seriously that she knew nothing about Mozart and had never heard of the magic flute. So she “searched Google and YouTube to think, ‘Oh no, what are we going to do with this?’ “. Stating also that the story was “tinkered with in an afternoon” and that “when you remove the jumble, basically, it’s a love story”, Paul Barritt and she imported it into the world of German Expressionism, whose codes and references they mastered well.
Patrick Corrigan was not aware of this interview: “It does not discourage me. She discovered it. That’s wonderful ! We all hope to share his enthusiasm on Saturday.