The winner of the 2023 Europe Prize won the Grand Prize at the Canadian Music Competition-Canimex in 2022. She has just signed a recording contract with Atma and will perform three times on Saturday at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, as part of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. If Elisabeth St-Gelais defines herself as an “Innu soprano”, it is not by chance. Meeting a brilliant and determined young woman.
“I am on a mission for reconciliation and truth! » Elisabeth St-Gelais does not pronounce this sentence as a slogan, but as the result of a reflection, when we seek to know why she deliberately chose to associate her profession and her origin.
” It’s a choice. I am Innu, my family is Innu, I have always identified with that. In my generation, we were no longer in the era where it was more advantageous to hide it. I was raised in Chicoutimi with non-natives and Indigenous people and I never felt any discrimination. In my childhood, in my adolescence, it was not ingrained not to say it [qu’on était innus]. The question of claiming it and putting it forward is due to timing with the era of reconciliation, because this job opens a path to the public for me and gives me a voice: the public can hear me speak. »
Exemplarity
It is about exemplarity and young people that Elisabeth St-Gelais thinks first. “We need to identify with people who are in the culture, with potential models. There are young people attending school in urban areas who are doing quite well. But for young people in the communities, things are not going very well. We are also proud of the young people in the communities, but they have more difficulties; there are consumption problems. Yes, with the fact that I grant [les mots] “soprano” and “Innu”, I can give them the idea that they can be Innu, or from any other nation, and that it is possible to do the same thing as me… If that could help them , help them to give up consumption a little or to enroll in school, or simply if the dream is to have a family, to do it in the most optimal conditions possible, I will definitely say and claim the terms “Innu soprano”, because I am on a mission for reconciliation and truth. »
The role of model that is close to Elisabeth St-Gelais’ heart will quickly come into conflict with her career plan, which will inevitably take her away from Quebec. Will she be able to mourn her mission? “I thought about it for a long time. I’m at the very beginning. I don’t even have the agent I want yet, but I’m definitely going to leave. I’m leaving to make a career, a reputation, a name, so that when I come back, no one wonders if I’m there because I’m from the First Nations or if I’m there because I’m really good. We will know that I have done my classes and I will be able to help even better, because the weight of my words will weigh even more heavily in the balance. I will, I hope, have significant notoriety to be able to use this voice and this audience to help the First Nations even more. »
While elsewhere teenagers are rejected or, worse, harassed and bullied at school when they don’t like the same music as their peers, singing classical from a young age has not been a source of problems for Elisabeth in her community of Pessamit. “It’s taken as something very surprising. They don’t really know what it is, but they are learning. My mother, for example, is so curious, so impressed; she is thirsty to learn more about operas, about classical music. In the community too, when someone shines in an environment they don’t know, they are surprised, they are curious and they want to learn more. Yes, it could have happened that they felt disconnected from that, but not at all. I feel support, I know they are doing research. They invited me to sing at Pessamit last summer, it’s a beautiful relationship and I feel supported. »
Poulenc at 14
Elisabeth St-Gelais therefore started music very young. “My mother signed me up for singing lessons and I haven’t stopped since. » One of the singing teachers at the secondary school had heard “lyrical potential” in his voice. This potential was immediately tested with a famous French melody, The paths of love by Francis Poulenc. “I sang this when I was 14. » The conclusive test led Elisabeth, now 27 years old, on a path that she has never left. “I really liked classical music and had ease with it. So I continued. Anyway, I always knew that in my life I was going to make music. »
Elisabeth then studied for three years with Luce Gaudreault at Alma College. Luce Gaudreault has taught several well-known singers, including Marie-Eve Munger, Julie Boulianne and Ariane Girard, principal teacher at the Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal and current teacher of Elisabeth.
The “lyrical, almost dramatic soprano in the making” will then complete her training at McGill University. In 2017, she found herself alone in Montreal to start her baccalaureate with Aline Kutan, one of her idols. When Elisabeth St-Gelais progresses to mastery in 2021, with a technique that she considers solid thanks to the work done with Aline Kutan, harvest time begins. “That’s where I won the Wirth Award, the McGill University competition for singers,” she says. Success earned him a prize, but also the consideration and help of the patron.
“Winning this prize was the start of a sort of rise,” recognizes Elisabeth St-Gelais. “After that, I won the Canimex Canadian Music Competition in the 19-30 year old category, which led me to sing with the Quebec Symphony Orchestra.” During her second year of master’s degree, the soprano already has some commitments. “I went to do an internship at the National Opera Company of Canada and a recording for Radio-Canada. » She earned the title of “Radio-Canada Revelation”.
Teamwork
After reaching the semi-final of the Prix d’Europe in 2022, Elisabeth St-Gelais aimed for the final in 2023. “I deployed a completely different strategy. I was hyper-prepared, with my close team: Ariane Girard, François Racine, the director, my coach vocal and an extraordinary pianist friend. Everything was refined in detail, surgical. We put together two different programs. In the final, there was no repeat. When you are prepared like that, when you perform you can let yourself go and give everything you have in your heart. » She recognizes that the Europe Prize was “a great moment, for [elle]For [son] team and also for [sa] Innu community. They were so proud of me. It gives the image that First Nations people are capable of doing things like that too. Not just me. They too would be capable of it.”
As part of her contract with Atma, Elisabeth St-Gelais’ first recording will be devoted to French melodies. On Saturday, she will sing at the Museum of Fine Arts at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., as part of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Culture Days, a vocal composition, Nothing will kill my light. The work was commissioned by the Bourgie Hall and the International Literature Festival (FIL) from Innu poet Maya Cousineau Mollen and Anishinaabe composer Barbara Assiginaak, inspired by a work from the museum, Woman sitting on a bed by George Segal.
How does Elisabeth St-Gelais see these indigenous projects which suddenly multiply, for example in the symphonic seasons, a world very far from tradition? “There are First Nations creators who compose symphonic works. It’s good or not good. Just because it’s indigenous doesn’t mean it’s good. But if, through a symphony orchestra, we can hear the spirit and vision of an indigenous composer, I find that downright extraordinary, because it is the very concept of reconciliation. Everyone reaches out to the other and there is a meeting to live together. The risk, on the other hand, is when it seems forced, when we twist the rag to the last drop to be sure that we are indigenous enough, that we tick the boxes. Indigenous culture is so natural, in nature, that nothing can be forced. When we want too much, it takes away the truth, the magic, the natural which is linked to nature, to the earth which decides for us. »