The night of Christmas Eve passed away, at the age of 98, Claire Gagnier, my grandmother.
Montreal soprano who was once a star in Quebec, she radiated in Canada and the United States from the end of the Second World War. Nicknamed the “Canadian nightingale”, she was one of the most appreciated and acclaimed singers of the public here thanks to the mastery of her art and her charm, as reported in the articles that appeared in the newspapers of the past.
Most people of her generation that I spoke to about my grandmother, regardless of social status, knew her name, much to my amazement. It must be said that at the time, we sat two and a half hours in front of the television to watch a Puccini opera on Sunday evenings.
After winning first prize in the “Singing Stars of Tomorrow” competition in 1944 on the English-language radio station of the Société Radio-Canada (SRC), a scholarship enabled him to study classical singing at the Juilliard School in New York. At the age of 20, she went on a cross-Canada tour to concert halls across the country, accompanied by her mother.
She has participated in many operas on stage, as well as on CBC radio and television, notably playing Mimi in Bohemian and playing in Madame Butterfly by Puccini. She even took part in the last opera (Faust de Gounod) broadcast live from Radio-Canada in 1972.
We will have seen her on stage, sometimes with the troupe of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, sometimes at Carnegie Hall, as well as alongside the great Quebec musicians of her time, notably Wilfrid Pelletier, singers Richard Verreau and Léopold Simoneau.
Even the composer André Mathieu had come to play at her house one afternoon, giving her a handwritten composition. He then asked her for $5 to take a taxi home. She would regret not having been more generous, realizing too late that this musical genius didn’t have a penny.
My grandmother belonged to one of the Quebec families that marked the rise of classical music in Quebec.
To my knowledge, it represents the last link in the unparalleled musical tradition of the Gagniers. It was his clarinettist grandfather, Joseph Gagnier, who was the maestro of this genealogy. He will have taught several musical instruments to each of his 27 children, thus constituting what was called the Orchester Gagnier.
Among them, two women and seven men, including my grandmother’s father, René Gagnier, a violinist, would join the Orchester symphonique de Montréal in 1934, along with countless other orchestras, quintets and quartets that no longer exist today.
To give you an idea, my grandmother’s uncle, Jean-Josaphat Gagnier, was a conductor, bassoonist, clarinetist, pianist, composer and musical director of Radio-Canada. André Mathieu’s father, Rodolphe Mathieu, accompanied on the piano the string quartet of which my grandmother’s father was a member.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR
Claire Gagnier on the show Has a clear fountain (SRC), where she was both the host and the main star
I wanted to honor the memory of his long musical career, now somewhat forgotten. I salute her quest for excellence, her rigor and the love of music that she transmitted to us, she who rehearsed from an early age, first on the violin then on singing, with a father endowed with the ear absolute that I imagined loving but demanding. She will also have shone by her feminism, evolving in the very masculine world of classical music of the time.
Despite her refined diva ways, my grandmother impressed with her intelligence, her culture and her ironic sense of humor.
Both on stage and in her personal life, she will have had the wisdom not to always force her voice.
This voice that I would have liked to hear one last time.