The Opéra de Montréal opened its 2022-2023 season on Saturday with an aesthetic production of the found by Verdi. We will run there for the song much more than for the theater.
” The find like you’ve never seen it before,” announced the Opéra de Montréal. We, no; but our grandparents, yes! In 1959, the legendary German director Walter Felsenstein brought about a revolution in Verdian production in Berlin. It was then aboutotello. As Pierre Flinois wrote this otello, filmed next, in 1969, in the studio (it can be found on YouTube), “gave the impression of a new genre, still unexplored: the theatrical super-passion”. This incarnation, synergy of theater and song, has since become a school.
With the director Michel-Maxime Legault, it’s back to the 1958 box: more or less impassive characters who interact at a minimum and come to swing their tunes. Let there be no passionate interaction between Manrico and Leonora in Act III, fine. It’s quite intriguing, and in the genre, we haven’t seen worse at the OdM since La Traviata by Jacques Leblanc in 2006, where Alfredo turned his back on the dying Violetta to go caress a pillow. But who can understand at the end of Act II, seeing Manrico, Leonora and Luna lined up statically like butternut squash waiting to be cooked in soup for Halloween, that, according to the summary provided by the institution, “ Manrico manages to flee with Leonora, leaving the Count in the grip of the most vehement fury”?
Fortunately, this absence of theater is part of a refined, but very aesthetic decor, with a reflective floor which earned us a wonderful idea (there are others) from decorator Jean Bard and lighting designer Éric Champoux for the last act jail.
So we have a very pleasing setting for a sort of concert version or “profane oratorio” (given the importance of the choir — excellent) of found by Verdi. And there, for once, it is worth the detour. After a very honorable start by Matthew Treviño in Ferrando, we pass the first scene of Étienne Dupuis, in which he was not yet at his full vocal performance. But everything else in the baritone’s performance was glorious, of remarkable breadth and authority in one of the most heinous characters operatic creation has spawned.
On stage, Marie-Nicole Lemieux is her perfect opponent, on equal terms. His Azucena retains a great moral nobility, which is reflected in his singing, with bass of impressive width, but not vulgarly spread out (the gypsy character may have been a pretext for this elsewhere, but here, it is the determination of a woman seeking revenge that matters). Nicole Car is very safe, very elegant. The vocal dramatism required especially at the beginning of Act IV pushes her into real entrenchments. But even if she doesn’t ideally have the voice for the role, her performance is musically remarkable. As for Luc Robert, he is an excellent surprise: brilliant, valiant. The small downside compared to its colleagues is the feeling it conveys of being less equal, less perfectly in control. But the vocal material is superb, and this production, with this entourage, will do him the greatest good after deep doubts during the pandemic. Excellent performance also from Kirsten LeBlanc as Iñez.
For the musical mayonnaise to take, you obviously need a chef, and we had it with Jacques Lacombe, because Il Trovatore, an endless suite of tunes and ensembles, not to mention the choirs, requires constantly relaunching the musical discourse. It was done.
So go see The find ? Yes. Especially because you won’t be hearing it like that again anytime soon.