The audience was moved to tears. Dazzled. Enchanted. For her final master’s recital last April, soprano Rose Lebeau Sabourin captivated the audience by performing a poem of her own, The seawith original music by her accomplice Martin Roger, a graduate like her of the Conservatoire de musique de Québec.
It’s hard to find the words to describe such a touching voice. A listener left this message on the singer’s Facebook page, where her performance can be viewed: “This performance […] hit me like an arrow to the heart, tears streaming down my cheeks happily long before its conclusion.”
This classical singing enthusiast is not the only one to fall under the spell of the young artist, an accomplished pianist, poet and soprano in full flight, barely out of the Conservatory. She played last May in The batby Strauss, at the Opéra de Québec. She is part of the cast of the Festival d’opéra de Québec, until August 3. And she went on stage at the Festival de chant de Barcelone, at the beginning of July.
“People tell me: ‘You have a beautiful voice.’ I tell them it’s a voice that I worked on. It’s the work that makes the voice, it’s not magic,” laughs Rose Lebeau Sabourin, reached at her mother’s home in Quebec City.
“I sing every day. I try. Singing is a sport. The muscles of the larynx need to be trained. You’re like an athlete, if you stop training, you lose a little endurance,” she adds.
Managing your brand
Like all the young artists we met for this series of reports, Rose Lebeau Sabourin explains that the recipe for launching a career in art is simple: you have to master your instrument — your voice, in the case of the soprano — and know how to sell yourself to obtain contracts as a self-employed worker.
I have always loved obscure works, that no one knows about. I like finding hidden gems.
“We need to make contacts, we need to be seen and we need to be heard. No one will come looking for us if we wait in our living room,” she sums up.
That’s why she went to the Barcelona Singing Festival at the beginning of July. Not only did Rose sing on stage, she also perfected the Spanish and Catalan repertoire, which she loves. And while she was at an international singing event, she took the opportunity to delve into Brazilian lyrical art. In Portuguese, no less.
“I came out with one more passion,” laughs this dynamic graduate. In addition to singing, she has been playing the piano since the age of 5. She speaks Spanish and Catalan, and she had learned the basics of Portuguese before going to the Barcelona festival.
Classical singers use the phonetic alphabet to learn to express themselves in a foreign language, Rose explains. In Barcelona, she also took a master class in Portuguese diction. Another string to her bow.
To (re)read, in the same series
To find one’s way
This interest in the repertoire of the Iberian Peninsula came about in a curious way: when she was young, she adored the character of Puss in Boots, played by Antonio Banderas, in Shrek. “This curiosity grew into passion over the years. I became more and more interested in Spain, its culture, its history and its music,” explains Rose Lebeau Sabourin.
Mastering this little-known repertoire is one of the young singer’s strengths. “We want to be able to distinguish ourselves, to have our own identity as artists. I don’t want to be just another soprano we have in Quebec,” she says.
“I’ve always loved obscure works, that no one knows. I like finding hidden gems. At the same time, when you audition, people want you to perform the great classics. You have to navigate with that balance when you start in this profession.”
One day, a teacher introduced her to the repertoire of composer Frederic Mompou, describing him as a Spanish artist. “I listened to him and I said to myself: ‘It seems to me that this doesn’t really sound Spanish,’” the singer says.
She was right. Mompou was Spanish, but above all Catalan. And she had an artistic crush on this virtuoso who died at the age of 94, in 1987. She decided to dedicate her end-of-bachelor’s degree show to Mompou’s melodies. She took an online Catalan course with a teacher from Montreal.
“There are interesting links to be made between Catalonia and Quebec,” two nations with their own identity within a larger political whole, recalls the young artist.
Dream big
This daughter of a violinist father and a music-loving mother has long combined her passions for the piano and singing. Before pursuing her higher education in singing at the Conservatoire de Québec, she completed her secondary studies in piano at the Conservatoire de Gatineau.
A turning point happened when she made it to the Quebec finals of Secondaire en spectacle. She was one of the very few participants to deliver a classical singing performance. Rose remembers the energy that came over her when the students applauded her wildly after her singing session.
“I felt so good that I didn’t want to leave the stage! I said to myself: ‘Something is happening.’ I felt even more at home than at the piano.”
She could also give her all to writing, to sing her own poems. A (other) passion, which she developed in a French class in high school. Rose particularly appreciates the constraints in poetry. She prefers an alexandrine to free verse. Inspired by Nelligan, Hugo, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, she dreams of singing her words on stages all over the world. She seems on the right track to achieve this.