The Classica Festival, launched on Thursday with a major choral concert, stands out this year with its lyrical division, the New Metropolitan Opera, inaugurated on Wednesday with a creation by Airat Ichmouratov. Like a cat, the artistic director of the festival, Marc Boucher, lands on his feet, parrying all the vicissitudes enameling the trajectory of the festival. However, we did not expect to see him link recent artistic developments to greenhouse gases!
“The New Metropolitan Opera gives me a crazy energy, especially since the lyrical world on the planet must change and the principle of Stage [ces saisons lyriques, comme à Montréal, avec des représentations groupées d’une production, par opposition au système de répertoire, avec une troupe permanente qui alterne les productions] is probably behind us. The interchangeable singers ranging in freelance left and right, it will be an outdated notion, because the notion of carbon neutrality is fast approaching in public funding,” explains Marc Boucher, interviewed by The duty.
recycled opera
Those who thought that the questions of “diversity, representativeness, equity” were going to obsess the classical world for a long time will be served: we have already moved on! “It will condition the way the performing arts will develop in the future; we will take into account the GHG impact in everything we do”, indicates the general and artistic director of Classica.
Marc Boucher feels on the good side: “The New Metropolitan Opera is taking place in the Salle Claude-Champagne, a 1,000-seat hall, working digitally to dematerialize the sets, designing costumes made of recycled textiles or found outright in thrift stores” . The artistic director recognizes that this responds to economic imperatives, but he claims “consistency with the new public funding guidelines”.
“All the singers we hire — 25 roles, including 23 performed by Quebec singers to whom we pay very competitive fees with the market for our three performances this year — are a form of troupe, and if we manage to develop other projects in collaboration with other professional companies, we will create an ecosystem which, in three to five years, will manage to double or triple the number of performances in Quebec. »
And Marc Boucher to dramatize the issue: “The consequence of the reverse logic is simple: let us close the faculties of music and the conservatories for opera singers, because, otherwise, we will train unemployed people. For what ? Because the international market will proceed in the same way. For example, for Massenet’s operetta The adorable Belboul that we are presenting this season, I was in discussion with Mathieu Franot, who has just been appointed to the Opéra de Reims, and the first question was: “How many plane tickets are there and how are we going to offset GHG?” »
Redeployment
Adaptation is the leitmotif of Marc Boucher, who finds in his new lyrical initiative a welcome diversion from his task as general manager. “I am a professional collector. For 12 years, I have been looking for money left and right: this is the somewhat heavy part of my job. So I needed an idea that would carry me, stimulate me. »
So yes, there is the Classica program in Montérégie with a lot of French music, tributes to female composers and the Sequels by Claude Bolling. But, fundamentally, the deeper development plans had to be rethought. The conversion of a church into a concert hall by 2024 in Saint-Lambert is no longer on the agenda, especially since Saint-Lambert has not renewed its partnership with Classica. “The political environment over the past year and a half has forced us to reinvent ourselves elsewhere in Montérégie. In accordance with the way of proceeding with the public financing of the CALQ and Tourisme Québec, we assume a mission in Montérégie. We turned to Longueuil, which welcomed us with open arms, and Boucherville, where we have significant support for our development. » The head office of Classica, in Saint-Lambert, could move to Longueuil, but the development of the New Metropolitan Opera required seeking new contacts.
“That led us to set foot in Montreal. Last January, I met Nathalie Fernando, Dean of the Faculty of Music. It turns out that the Claude-Champagne room has a perfect gauge for opera and that the dean wishes to put this room back in the Montreal landscape. As we don’t have our hall on the South Shore, something bad happened: the idea is to establish in June in Montreal, that is to say not in competition with the Opéra de Montréal and with other professional companies, an opera festival. »
But a weekday performance is a bit short! “This year we are at a performance, yes. This is what we can do with our financial means. Our goal is to bring this generation of exceptional opera singers to work. Next year, we are aiming for two performances for The Kaiser von Atlantis by Viktor Ullmann and The gallant Indies by Rameau as well as a concert of airs by Mozart. »
Marc Boucher also plans to use the proximity of the hall to the sports facilities of the University of Montreal. Next year, there will always be a big outdoor show in Montérégie, as this year, on June 10, Dark Side of the Moon, a symphonic show, which should bring together, according to the Festival, 50,000 spectators. In addition to taking up residence at the Claude-Champagne hall, the university’s Vincent-d’Indy soccer field, right next door, with a capacity of 45,000 people, or the CEPSUM outdoor stadium can be added. “For next year, we are already working with James Lacombe and the Orchester Classique de Montréal at a large popular outdoor concert, and we can very well sense that Carmen is in the crosshairs. »
Import Orchestra
The 2023 edition is notable for the notable absence of the Orchester symphonique de Longueuil and its host. Couldn’t they provide the musical services required by the Festival? “As an organization, we avoid public controversy. While we don’t want to be associated with controversy, that doesn’t mean we don’t support musicians in other projects. They also announced that they were changing the name of the orchestra. However, we work in Montérégie. So, yes, we hired the Orchester de Trois-Rivières and Alain Trudel, but the program Quebec fantasy, with works by Claude Champagne, Jacques Hétu and popular songs orchestrated by Gilles Bellemare, it is a repertoire in the strings of Alain. So we went there with the training led by Alain Trudel. »
As for the orchestral state of play in Longueuil and in the future, Marc Boucher is content to say this: “We hope that the orchestra will once again become the civic tool that it has always been during the years of Marc David. That’s the only wish I can make and it’s consistent with the current public funding structure of the CALQ, since we get money because we do work on a territory. »
As such, with regard to Classica, Marc Boucher considers that the Nouvel Opéra Métropolitain in Montreal in no way undermines the artistic proposals made in Montérégie. It will ultimately decide whether to create two separate entities, a question that is not on the agenda.
As for the famous Le Concert bleu platform, dedicated to webcasts, “it is ready with a very high level of audio video performance”, but several points are still under discussion, including subsidies for the operating budget and the necessary contractual modifications to the broadcasting rights that Marc Boucher wishes to extend to five years. Added to this is a new pitfall: “With the tumult around artificial intelligence comes an additional challenge: the encryption of content so that the ChatGPTs of this world do not take left and right content that is wandering . So there, we have to redeposit a budget before the end of May which will take into account the money necessary for the encryption of all content, since we are talking about the preservation of rights and metadata. »