“Without music at all, I would not survive,” writes Michel Tremblay in Musical offerings, short collection of memories in the spirit of books Twelve twists and turns and Animated views. Here, of course, it is his musical associations, first opera, then Barbara, Céline, Bach and many others, which are the pretext for opening the drawer of his memory.
The first stories are set in the middle of a pandemic, a moment of isolation when the writer is cut off from what feeds him: attendance at the theater, concert halls and cinema, above all. However, he does not go on forever on this and quickly plunges into his past and goes back, without any particular chronology, to the 1950s.
We rediscover a music lover Michel Tremblay. He casts an enlightened but merciless gaze on the operas he has seen in Montreal and New York, recounts his raptures in front of performances to make you cry and his giggles when the productions border on the ridiculous. Whoever likes punishes well, as they say.
If he talks about the music he likes as a connoisseur, it is through the emotions they give rise to or release in him that he shows himself to be vulnerable. One of the most touching passages in this little book reveals how, after the death of his “favorite brother”, Bernard, it was Trio in A minor for piano, violin and cello, by Tchaikovsky, which allowed him to live through his immense grief.
The other blow to the heart that one takes when reading his Musical offerings, it is towards the end, where he tells about his hearing problems and the immense grief that this imposes on him. On stage as on DVD, it is first of all through the image, through the values of the operatic productions themselves, that he now seeks his pleasure.
“As long as I can watch the music, I will.” With a different joy, a sort of diverted joy, but a joy all the same. It is the happiness that we wish him.
Musical offerings
Michel Tremblay
Leméac / Actes Sud
128 pages