Taking the pretext of new appointments to the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec, The duty invites you into the imagination of artists whose exemplary work promotes culture.
“I’m busy as ever! I work wall to wall. This summer, Michel Rivard is playing at the theatre. “I rehearsed a comedy that is being performed in Saint-Jérôme. It is a theatrical adaptation of the film The great seduction. I have the leading role, so it’s a lot of work. » The piece is presented under the name of Sainte-Marie-la-Mauderne. On stage, Michel Rivard appears alongside, among others, Normand Brathwaite.
The theater has always fascinated him. The singer, as we know, was for a long time one of the headliners of the National League of Improvisation (LNI). “My natural environment was not that of song. My father was an actor. Robert Rivard indeed played a lot in the teletheatres broadcast by state television. “He had studied in France. He willingly submitted to a show, to be a part of something bigger than himself, to listen to others. It’s a dynamic that I’m taming myself, that I’m starting to tame again. »
The theater has always been part of his being. “I never studied theater anywhere. I often had offers. I refused. It is a profession in itself. But it’s a job I love. And I learn to rediscover it. »
There was a time when Michel Rivard shone at the LNI. “They still talk to me about it! I was very young exposed to art, theater, song, music, but without being pushed towards that. »
His father, he says, would probably have preferred to see him become a lawyer or something. “He would have liked me to give back a certain seriousness to the family coat of arms! Before Beau Dommage, Michel Rivard went to attend the renowned Collège Sainte-Marie, one of the best educational institutions of the time in Montreal. He will learn to skip school, to master new guitar chords. This will be his entry into life, into the world, into what he calls “the class of 1974”.
A school of one’s own
“I know exactly what the gang of Beau Dommage gave me and what I gave him. We were part of a movement, which I affectionately call the “class of 74”. Beau Dommage, Harmonium, the Séguins, all this gangthere, we were all buddies, we hang out in the same bars, we were even roommates. I know very well that it is important: it is my school. »
At the time, there weren’t many steps to get to the big stage. “There was no song school… There was no Granby song contest… There was absolutely none of that. So, we learned together, showing each other guitar chords and making each other listen to business. Did you write a song? Play it to me! It’s very good! Me, I’m going to try to make a better one… We were progressing like that. […] I continue to say that it is an extraordinary school. I’m very proud of what we’ve done with Beau Dommage. Very proud even when we came back, in 1993, for the space of a record and a huge tour, when I already had a solo career “which was rolling on fire from God.
Michel Rivard has just completed the long tour of a show that has stretched due to the pandemic. ” The origin of our speciesmy solo theater show, was to last a year and a half…” The hundredth performance took place as part of the Francos.
“At the same time, I have just finished a tour with the Polissons de la chanson, which is a tribute to Brassens. »
On the sly, he is working on setting up a new show. “It will be called The turn of the block. It will be next January. It will be a way, in quotes, to celebrate 50 years of songs. In short, Michel Rivard does not stop. “I just turned 70. They give me prizes. I take them, quite honestly, as an encouragement to continue…”
The times have changed
“When someone says to me: ‘Mr. Rivard, we loved you so much’, I know that they are talking to me about Beau Dommage! It’s as if someone were saying to me: “It’s valuable that you no longer do anything”… I realize that, for them, after Beau Dommage, there is nothing left… I can’t tell them. want to ! Even if I would say to them, at the corner of a street: “But you know, I did something else too and I was much more outside of Beau Dommage than with Beau Dommage!” I don’t want to sound more Buddhist than I am, but they’re happy with what I did then. It’s nice. That’s fine… And if they don’t know what I did afterwards, it doesn’t matter. It’s only water, as the other said. »
The times have changed. Michel Rivard affirms that it is important to remain sensitive to what is happening around him, in these complex, uncertain times. “I have a respect for a lot of creators that I don’t quite understand. Whether it’s rap, dance, theatre, there are things I see and I know it’s good, it’s interesting, but it’s not particularly aimed at me. I don’t have to understand everything either… I know very well that there are bands Quebecois, extraordinary rappers. I hear bits of it. I know they are “articulate” people, who read, who have vocabulary and everything. I met some. But hey, that’s not what I listen to in life…”
And how does he consider the use of French now in the world of song? “I’m less shocked than I was by a little bit in English in a song in French. Am I Right ? I do not know. But I don’t necessarily see it as a threat. Maybe because I’m more concerned with environmental issues than with “national pride” issues? »
The annoyance that has gripped him lately is due to something quite different. “It comes to me in any case when we emphasize too much the “blue pride”. It becomes so blue that it reminds us of certain blues from a certain era… The blue becomes dark blue at a given moment: and we no longer see much through it.