By designing her first program of the Domaine Forget International Festival, which will be held from June 24 to August 19, Mathieu Lussier did not really expect to find himself struggling with so many extra-musical questions.
We will not tell Mathieu Lussier that his mandate at Domaine Forget will give him gray hair! Merry man himself, he would be the first to laugh at the joke. But certainly, the sites on which he works are not the ones he thought. His quest is now to find what will allow, without making artistic compromises, to best connect the Domaine Forget with its public.
“I’ve liked to say for years, ‘If I’m lucky enough to run a festival one day, I have all these programming projects in mind.’ And here I see that the programming details are moved much further down the list of concerns. There is no question of wondering which Sibelius symphony he dreams of seeing Yannick Nézet-Séguin conduct during his weekend of concerts. “At the end of the day, we come up with down-to-earth considerations like: are people going to come back to the theater? There is a reconstruction to be done, a habit to be reestablished. »
pure sugar
In practice, with regard to the weekend when the Orchester Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin will be in residence at the Domaine with two concerts, July 22 and 23, Mathieu Lussier was quickly faced with the obvious: “It’s striking to see the Sunday afternoon concert really packed with Wagner, Strauss and Sibelius, while the Saturday night French music concert is not as full. So, you should know that our more aging clientele in Quebec tell us: “Me, 8 p.m. on Saturday evening at the Domaine, I no longer drive back.” We have therefore replaced concerts in the afternoon. With this, we may have a better chance of recovering some of our audience. They are there, the concerns, this year. »
The festival will open on St. John’s Day next Saturday at 4 p.m. with a special concert titled The traveler, a tribute from Les Violons du Roy to Gilles Vigneault. Mélanie Léonard will conduct orchestrations by François Vallières and will be surrounded by actors Marie-Thérèse Fortin and Normand Chouinard.
“I don’t want to water down the Domain’s programming. Opening with a Gilles Vigneault show and closing with a cinema show with Alexandre Tharaud could send such a signal, but at the same time, we have Saint-Jean on Saturday this year, so we have no choice. »
“I intend to use this summer as a laboratory”, admits Mathieu Lussier, who sees that the three best-selling concerts in 2022 were Yannick Nézet-Séguin with Antoine Tamestit, the closing gala with Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Karina Gauvin and Charles Richard-Hamelin and Symphonic pop with Marc Hervieux. “Can we use the notoriety of Marc Hervieux to refuel without necessarily doing either symphonic pop or classical? Because we realize that it is not at all the same people who come. The new artistic director examines these questions.
The scary pianist
Curious by nature, Mathieu Lussier thinks of everything: “I realized that I had a great communications team, which works very well, but never listens to classical music and doesn’t particularly like it. Listening to this team is interesting, because I tell myself that, if the festival does not resemble the people who work for the festival and live in the region, what are the chances that we will still be relevant in 10 years ? »
It is in this context that the new artistic director is delighted with the enthusiasm aroused by the class of double bassist François Rabbath. “He’s been making the trip every summer for 40 years. There will be 25 double basses on stage and Le Festif! de Baie-Saint-Paul, from July 20 to 23, to whom we reached out, will present the 25 double basses in a unique location. It’s going to be a highlight of their weekend. If a festival that is not classical at all finds it really cool to have classical music, then why should we, as a classical music festival, have difficulty creating that enthusiasm? »
“I see that there are still a lot of preconceptions about classical music. A lot of people think they don’t have what it takes to appreciate that. But when they dare, they love the experience. My friends who work at Radio-Canada tell me that the classical listening figures are good on Web radio. People listen to classical music. What people aren’t doing right now is going indoors. »
The traumas of the lack of audiences at festivals in 2022 have been experienced by everyone. To overcome them in 2023, Domaine Forget sought to make changes “in the formulas, the way of programming, the way of communicating things”.
As such, Mathieu Lussier even wonders about obstacles that we don’t necessarily think of. “I showed our brochure from last year to our communications manager. It shows a very dark photo of Louis Lortie. Our manager said, “I don’t know him, but he scares me!” It’s a very interesting comment, because if she receives it like that, you can’t just say to her: “Ah but, you don’t know that; it’s Louis Lortie!” You have to say, on the contrary, that she is not the only one to think that. That doesn’t mean that we don’t schedule Louis Lortie, but it does mean that we pay attention to the visuals and the way we present the concert. »
Types
A great adept of direct communication with the public, Mathieu Lussier wonders about the possible perverse effects of the old-fashioned “ritual”. “There were observations to be made on site in 2022. I went to the Domaine six or seven times. With 120 teachers on site, I didn’t want to meet all these people by email. »
The musician therefore necessarily attended concerts. “The experience that marked me the most was a recital by Marc-André Hamelin with a sonata by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, one of his compositions and, in the second part, the sonatahammer keyboard by Beethoven. There was a room full enough for an extremely demanding concert. Marc-André Hamelin; the name says something to the public. Seeing also the names of Bach and Beethoven, people say to themselves: “It’s reassuring to go see the piano, it’s going to be beautiful.” But people who are not prepared for such a demanding program, such a high standard, we have no chance of bringing them back into the hall after that. »
Even if Mathieu Lussier recognizes that the result was musically stratospheric, a doubt persists: “Marc-André Hamelin comes from a time when one could come like that to present oneself on stage and deliver all that with panache. But I wonder how we should communicate things. This recital had to be contextualized in some way. »
Mathieu Lussier considers, of course, that there are still music lovers who plan their trips according to the programming. “They have to find what they are looking for. But if we want to have people in the dining room again, we have to be able to attract holidaymakers who say to themselves: “There is a concert at the Domaine, let’s see!” and making sure that in the programming everyone finds their way around in some way. »
“We have an exceptional room and a gauge more accessible than the amphitheater of Lanaudière, certainly spectacular, but which looks deserted even when there are 1000 people. I believe in what we present, but I will see how we can enter this new phase. »
The creed of the new artistic director is clear: “If so much data tells us that music is part of people’s lives, if we have at Domaine Forget registrations of young people who want to dedicate their lives to classical music, we cannot not give up. The question is: what are we going to do with our concert halls? The answer is not a diagnosis of the public’s problem. The answer lies in our ways of doing things. I don’t have enough hindsight to see if our actions are improving things, but I don’t intend to give up. »