The Paramirabo and Musiques 3 femmes ensembles had joined forces under the aegis of Le Vivier to create at the end of the week, at the Darling Foundry, Listening to the Lost, chamber opera by Keiko Devaux. Within the composer’s exploratory approach lie a few nuggets.
The mandate of institutions such as Paramirabo, Musique 3 femmes, whose artistic director, Jennifer Szeto, ensured the scrupulous musical direction of the show, and du Vivier is the creation. Jeffrey Stonehouse, artistic director of Parabirabo and Le Vivier, recently told the Dutyalongside the presentation of Listening to the Losthis desire to “renew the operatic repertoire”.
What directory?
The task is difficult. It is clear, for example through the creations of Chants Libres, that many proposals have been made, but that things stumble on the term “repertoire”. We tirelessly add to a database of works, but will they be taken up, reproduced, exported, as so many witnesses of Quebec or Canadian creative know-how?
It is obvious that the opera that came out of here, Swadbaowes everything to Ana Sokolovic and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and that the one who is able to nurture ambitions is the beauty of the world, by Julien Bilodeau. A creative process around Keiko Devaux was both legitimate and expected. For her to have won prizes (Opus, Juno) last year, there must be a confluence of people who have listened to and appreciated her works. We would be so eager to read them all, absolutely all of them, analyzing Listening to the Lost…
The opera is based on a series of paintings on the idea, dear to the inventor Marconi, that sound never dies and permeates our memories. The first part of the work, which emerges from an initial sound impact, is largely experimental. The amplified voices (3 singers) play on the sound production (breath, sound) so much so that it feels like being immersed in one of those experimental music sessions of some “musical research group” in the second half of the 1970s or the 1980s in a center for young people and culture in the suburbs of Paris. We would like to invite the entire Juno jury to savor this moment of the composer he has awarded. In the objective of Keiko Devaux, it is a question of “evoking the capacity of sound and music to suggest images and emotions”. The images are directly suggested in Marie Brassard’s staging by a canopy screen, where projections (trees, water, rocks, colors) scroll past.
The lyricism, suddenly
The vocal trio is led by the solid and invested presence of Frédéricka Petit-Homme, against whom Raphaël Laden-Guindon tries to assert himself, which he succeeds in, before a conclusion, unfortunately vocally more crude. This balance is important, because it leads to the heart of the show, the compelling moment, which evokes the sound/memory dimension. Here the music, all in surf, becomes more lyrical and carries the song of the duo in what seems to explore the relationship sound-place. The highlight, the absolute nugget of Listening to the Lost is, then, a great soprano solo. It is undoubtedly (there were no surtitles and the darkness made it impossible to follow the texts) the exploration of the “sound/memory of beings” relationship through a text by Michaël Trahan. Alas, Sarah Albu’s vocal technique did not do justice to the lines of this solo, which requires a fuller and more lyrical voice.
Listening to the Lost was served by a spectacle of a beautiful finish. The orchestral score gives pride of place to the omnipresent flute, an assured part with a lot of impact (the word is important in reviving the sound waves of the music) by Jeffrey Stonehouse.
At the time of the assessment, we come back to the notion of repertoire, because now offers an interesting dilemma for the creator. On the one hand, a coherent but sometimes experimental and arduous artistic project. On the other, at the heart of it, about ten minutes which, isolated, could become its LonelyChild (Claude Vivier’s monologue) to her, allowing her to make herself known more widely, obviously with another performer. Will she accept this “extraction” when continuity is the very essence of her project?