Friday and Saturday, at the Darling Foundry, the Paramirabo ensemble will create Listening to the lost a chamber opera by composer Keiko Devaux, co-produced with Musique 3 femmes and co-broadcast with Le Vivier.
“It all starts with the concept that sound never dies. It was an idea of the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi ”, summarizes Jeffrey Stonehouse, artistic director of Paramirabo and Vivier, who commissioned this work from Keiko Devaux, winner of the 2022 Juno Prize and composer of the year at the Opus Prizes.
“It all started with the desire to collaborate with Keiko Devaux on a project, because his instrumental music is very lyrical, while his catalog does not include any work for the voice. This lyricism meets a “noiseiness”. Keiko has a fascination with sounds, distortions, sounds that undulate and creak a bit, but always in parallel with this lyricism,” says Jeffrey Stonehouse. “She is also very interested in memory, how we remember sounds and the role of sounds in our lives. »
On these themes, Stonehouse and Devaux called on three authors: Kaie Kellough, Daniel Canty and Michaël Trahan. “They wrote texts in French and in English on the subject of music and memory, hence the title, Listening to the Lost. Keiko then worked with these texts and modified them. »
It all started with the desire to collaborate with Keiko Devaux on a project, because his instrumental music is very lyrical, while his catalog does not include any works for the voice.
The texts are thus a starting point to inspire a work presented as “non-narrative, experimental and bilingual”. How do you make an opera that tells nothing? “Tell nothing or tell everything!” laughs Jeffrey Stonehouse. “As there is no obligation to go into a story based on the characters, we can speak of an experience in a somewhat suspended time, a period of reflection, because Keiko’s music is meditative; she rocks. »
Soulmates
Over the course of five sections or tableaux, three singer-actors (Sarah Albu, Frédéricka Petit-Homme and Raphaël Laden-Guindon) will interact “like a choir with very close harmonies, embodying a character who is not a character”, in the summary made by the sponsor, since the idea of sound that never dies being the main idea, there are not really characters, but stories around this theme and that of sound and memory.
The staging of this immersion of just under an hour was entrusted to Marie Brassard. She was able to work on solid pre-existing material, as the project’s delays caused by the pandemic made it possible to organize, in January 2022, a major “residency in research and creation” supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Everything was worked on in the studio, and even recorded.
In twelve years of existence, this is the fifth chamber opera produced by Paramirabo, but also a fifth collaboration, all genres combined, with Musique 3 femmes. “A chemistry has been created between the two organizations in relation to the apprehension of new works”, rejoices Jeffrey Stonehouse. It is moreover the artistic director of Musique 3 femmes, Jennifer Szeto, who will direct the creation of Listening to the Lost.