The classic festival season begins before the end of May with the launch of the Classica Festival on Tuesday by the Great Mass for the Dead de Gossec with Arion and Mathieu Lussier. Traditionally anchored in Montérégie, Classica chose the Claude-Champagne room at the University of Montreal for this opening. The puzzle of choosing rooms, but also that of aligning projects, which is revealed in discussion with the artistic director, Marc Boucher, draws an interesting case study on the uncertainties of this post-pandemic period.
In interviews with Marc Boucher, there are always a few pictorial or striking sentences that allow you to start thinking. ” THE Requiem de Gossec is not easy to sell. For the moment, the challenge will be to have more people in the room than on the stage,” summarizes the artistic director of Classica, who scheduled this concert with Mathieu Lussier from Arion, Tuesday, the day of the concert of closing of the season of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
Up there on the mountain
Not smart, you might say, but it’s all pre-sales that are gloomy these days: “Last year, we gave away a lot of tickets. This year, we are not giving away any tickets or offering any discounts. The ticket office is very average as we speak. There are several factors. Among these, the fact that we all received money during the pandemic, so we program and put it back into the artists’ pockets. That’s very good, but that means there are a lot of concerts. »
The director of Classica, who “works very hard to get sponsors” in order to “program concerts that are off the beaten track” and cannot bring himself to believe “that one day, we will end up having to program only the 4 seasonsthere 9e of Beethoven and the Requiem by Mozart”, notes that when he launched his festival, he had no competition. Indeed, it was a very slow period in the calendar, but the seasons are extending and other festivals have brought forward their dates, such as the Chamber Music Festival or Montreal Baroque.
Furthermore, Marc Boucher finds himself facing a dilemma. He launched the New Metropolitan Opera (NOM) as part of Classica with real logic. “The Lanaudière Festival is embodied in a region. Everyone incarnates in a region. I was at a festival in Montérégie, a region of 1.5 million people. But, a major problem, we do not have rooms and the Greater Montreal area was more conducive to the development of the NOM. We imagined this development in the Claude-Champagne room by thinking of a university gateway allowing first professional experiences. On the other hand, the University faces the challenge of increasing the level of applications from students who apply. »
But the hill is tough to climb for everyone. “The Claude-Champagne room, despite its excellent acoustics, is difficult to access. » If Classica scheduled its shows at the Maison symphonique, the festival would have access to a database of tens of thousands of potential spectators receiving information on its shows. For the moment, the Classica-University of Montreal partnership not being officially finalized, Classica sells shows in Montreal to a database of clients in Montérégie!
New actors
But that’s not all, because external parameters change the situation. “Rafael Payare wants to do the Mozart-Da Ponte operas in concert, the Trois-Rivières Orchestra does operas, Francis Choinière has had great success with Bohemian And Carmen : orchestras are starting to say that there is room for operas in concert versions. » Marc Boucher can only note that in two years, everything has changed: “The experience of Carmen and of Bohemian [avec Francis Choinière] at the Maison symphonique is fantastic, especially since at the Maison symphonique, there is an orchestra pit, which few people know about. So we are analyzing all the possibilities…”
By “all”, we understand moving, change of dates, etc. Marc Boucher furtively mentions the planned room in Longueuil on which he is counting a lot in the future: “The room in Longueuil, I hope they will do it properly. It’s a 170 million project…” There is no completion date yet for this project.
Regarding the programming of the 2024 Festival, The emperor of Atlantis, an opera composed by Viktor Ullmann in the wartime ghetto town of Terezín, will be presented on June 6. The other major project, The gallant Indies de Rameau, is postponed due to the health problems of Luc Beauséjour, who is recovering from his heart operation. “Scenography and staging are completed with a modern vision which makes possible The gallant Indies, which, at first glance, is a colonialist work, but which, if we return to what Rameau had in mind, is a subversive and revolutionary work, which takes on its full meaning when it is highlighted”, comments Marc Boucher . Horizon 2026 now.
The potential partnership with the University of Montreal had brought about an open-air opera project, and even quite specifically Carmen with Marie-Nicole Lemieux. We no longer see any trace of it. “Classica commissioned an opera on the life of Sarah Bernhardt in Montreal from composer Jaap Nico Hamburger with a libretto by Bertrand Laverdure. Sarah deals with the climate in Quebec at the beginning of the 20th centurye century through the tragedian’s stay in Montreal and ends with the death of Sarah Bernhardt in Paris in her theater. This raises all kinds of questions: war, capitalism, freedom. »
The writing of Sarah must be completed in September 2024 and the opera premiered next summer with Marie-Nicole Lemieux in the title role. “It’s been planned for three years. If the opera is not completed on time, there is a plan B which is Carmen outdoors and which costs a lot of money. » In clear terms: the singer is booked in 2025 for Classica, and the priority project is Sarah : “I’m just waiting for the composer to finish his music. If he finishes his music in time for Marie-Nicole to learn the role of Sarah, we will Sarah in 2025. Plan B is Carmen outdoors, but we have to talk about the business model. »
Money for one
And this is where we enter into circumlocutions of which classical music sometimes has the (great) secret. Let’s follow the reasoning. “The open-air opera model costs between $300,000 and $400,000 without sets and without staging, just with spatial planning,” Marc Boucher tells us. His solution? “The business model that needs to be put in place is a symbolic entry price of $5 or $10, so that if you attract 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 people, you can absorb the costs. »
His problem? “The OM and the OSM with concerts in the parks. OM attracts 40,000 or 50,000 people to the foot of Mount Royal for free. But there is still a cost to this. Arriving with a proposal for a paid open-air opera at a festival raises an economic question. ” In other words, is the public willing to pay for ” open air “, when we offer him the concept for free elsewhere?
Marc Boucher’s reasoning is as follows: “There is a cost linked to what the OSM and OM do. Who pays for this (grants, sponsors, tickets)? I am ready to do Carmen free, but I would have to find sponsors. If we said collectively: “Let’s all adhere to a business model where we would ask for 5 or 10 dollars to start absorbing part of the costs”, that would give the means to people who would like to get started in this, for example ‘Opéra de Montréal at the Quartier des spectacles, which would be great. »
Obviously, this reasoning leads to at least one corollary question: Sarah targets how many people and costs how much? After initially slipping on the question, Marc Boucher does not escape it. “$150,000 to $200,000. » And this, for a single performance in front of 940 people in Claude-Champagne. Having difficulty finding this money? None: “The 150,000 is part of what it cost. Everything is already planned. We found several patrons at 100,000 each who form a kind of company. We have to do operas in theaters. Sarah is intended for three principal roles and an orchestra of 20 to 25 musicians. »
Classica — which will end on June 16, will host the Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra on June 3 and 4, will pay tribute to the centenary of the death of Théodore Dubois, will offer an evening for the 20e birthday of Starmania in concert and will present the premiere of the show on June 11 Marie Hubert. Daughter of the King — has the art of raising lots of good questions.