It was in a packed Pierre-Mercure hall that the Orchester Classique de Montréal achieved one of its greatest successes with the creation of The Torchchamber opera by Montreal composer of Haitian origin David Bontemps to a libretto inspired by an award-winning piece by Faubert Bolivar.
Haiti is everywhere in The Torch : the corrupt elites who believe themselves above everything, but also beliefs, ancestral rites, voodoo, dances, rhythms.
The work of David Bontemps has an enormous advantage: it avoids pretension. Since the composer aims for a “very simple ideal: that of respect for others”, he does not hide behind the screens of a false modernity. His musical language aims for everyone’s understanding. It therefore draws on two old recipes that have proven their worth: melodies (admirable air from Mademoiselle in the 3rd tableau and superb scene from Madame in the 6th) and leitmotivs, effective thematic cells, tirelessly repeated, sometimes slightly varied, linked to the discourse of Monsieur, Madame’s visions or Mademoiselle’s aspirations.
Turned into a zombie
As David Bontemps summarized on Saturday in The duty “Monsieur (a tenor) is the narcissistic intellectual who has political ambitions and is preparing a speech. His wife, with whom they are a dysfunctional couple, seems mentally deranged. She’s a mezzo-soprano. Mademoiselle is a soprano and the Man, who appears in the fifth tableau, is a bass-baritone. »
In fact Mademoiselle is the maid, follower of the voodoo deity Ogou La Flambeau. Monsieur’s ancillary fantasies will lead him to rape Mademoiselle (poignant music), which will lead to the arrival of Man, a sort of high priest of the cult, who will kill him and transform him into a zombie, Mademoiselle’s toy. This type of reversal, in favor of the one who says that “misery is war”, is not without evoking Triangle of SadnessPalme d’Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
The plot works very well, the variety of music too, orchestrated for strings and maracas but adapted to an audience from all walks of life. What makes people tick regularly is a prosody that is often a little wobbly with a strange accentuation on unexpected syllables in French (example: “Moustache” with a strong support on the “che”). The musical formulation of the conclusion of several tables is also a bit stereotyped, as if a recipe had to be applied.
Led by an omnipresent Alain Trudel, the set is archi-dominated by the female protagonists: Suzanne Taffot, perfect as Mademoiselle, dazzling in the 3rd tableau, and Catherine Daniel, truly astonishing, with magnificently dug bass, as Madame.
In men, it gets tougher. Brandon Coleman (the Man) has an extremely impressive, Caronte-like bass voice in The Orfeo by Monteverdi. But the poor man seems to be counting the minutes that separate him from the end of his ordeal jabbering the soft French syllables he had to memorize phonetically.
Tenor Paul Williamson doesn’t have much going for him. The voice is cramped and he makes a lot of effort. In fact we are again faced with the problem of creations requiring black male singers. There are female singers, but it is very difficult to find singers for contemporary operas whose future we do not know. The problem had arisen more acutely with Backstage at Carnegie Hall by Tim Brady.
David Bontemps really deserved to have, opposite Taffot and Daniel, a tenor of the caliber of Patrick Kabongo, seen in Don Pasquale at the Quebec Opera. It would take a great patron, but the work would also take on a completely different dimension.