Sunday evening, the landline rings. “Helene? »
Only my mother calls me through this channel. Denise, this character. High as three apples, apple-woman, there is a fruit even in her pretty surname, Pomerleau. At night, she doesn’t sleep, she reads, and eats when she wants. A passionate. Big character, lots of energy, almost 78 years old. The heroine of an implausible and whimsical film, which has not yet been written.
“Hi mom! »
During the pandemic, to deceive loneliness and boredom, Denise fell in love with opera. She subscribed to platforms that give access to several shows per week. She managed to understand how to listen to it on her tablet, and forged a real operatic culture.
“I just had a crazy idea. Would you like to go see the last performance of Lohengrinof Wagner in New York this week? There are Quebecers in there and I dream of setting foot at the Metropolitan Opera. »
A busy week was looming, I didn’t have time to organize this trip, barely time to get there and, unlike my mother, I don’t know anything about opera. But I have a weakness for bubbles in the brain, projects that don’t make sense and allow me to escape everyday life… “I’m tempted; I come with you ! »
The following Saturday, at noon, Denise and I landed in the sunny Big Apple, vibrant with light and chlorophyll. It was 19 degrees Celsius, our hotel was three minutes from the Met Opera to maximize the thirty hours of sweet madness we were going to spend there.
For an hour, we drank all this sun like two junkiesstrolled around the fountain in front of the mythical New York concert hall where the poster of Lohengrinstaged by François Girard, directed by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, with the thin neck of a swan and its wing unfolded even on the arches and columns of the building.
In the middle of the afternoon, my mother wanted to go and take a little rest at the hotel. While I devoured a small pot of banana pudding at the Magnolia Bakery, Denise had time to turn the room upside down; to flood the bathroom floor because she had trouble adjusting the knob that was screwed in too high for her liking; to unpack and repack his suitcase at least five or six times; to push the heater to the maximum when she thought she had turned on the air conditioning, turning the room into a tropical forest. She was hours away from realizing her big dream and, like a kid at Christmas, it no longer held in place.
When the time to go eat a bite before the 4 hours 40 minutes that the three acts of Lohengrin happened, my mother was way too upset. I went to dinner alone while she went to the opera with her little cherry red twins. When I went to join her half an hour before the start of the first act, there was still hardly anyone in the room, apart from my mother, small apple in the big one, who was waiting for the start of the performance, feverishly.
Denise was not disappointed. It’s absolutely sumptuous, an opera. I will not venture to offer an analysis of the show – you have to read Christophe Huss for that. I didn’t understand everything, except that the end of the world came because a woman wanted to know the identity of her fiancee and was expected of her, a bit like in Blue Beard, that she remains in ignorance, but I received in full thorax all this great beauty. I was intoxicated, capsized, especially when Christine Goerke, the soprano who played Otrund, opened her mouth. This voice. Cream or velvet or crack — or all of them at the same time. Between the acts, small champagne flute in hand, we went up to the floor of the Grand Tier to observe the chandeliers. Savor the opulence and splendor of a festive evening and say Carpe Diem Or YOLO.
On returning from the opera, the restaurants closed. My mother went to get a sandwich at the convenience store. She was on 220, not lining up for a big night. Fortunately, I had brought my plugs and my white noise machine to drown out the din of the New York night.
As at the end of the third act, the curtain has fallen in the bedroom. Denise will be sleeping when she comes back down to earth, and will have wonderful dreams.