The voice of opera, singers, directors and conductors, Sylvia L’Écuyer, presenter of Place at the operafor 15 years, leaves Radio-Canada after a 37-year career. A special program presented by Marc Hervieux will pay tribute to him on Saturday at 1 p.m. on ICI Musique Classique, and on Sunday on ICI Musique at 7 p.m.
“My approach to opera is more musicological, but my approach to people is very human. When it’s time to take leave of her microphone, the emotion that grips Sylvia L’Écuyer is due to the nostalgia of the many encounters over the years.
The grande dame of music radio was able to observe first-hand the conquest of international lyrical stages by Quebec and Canadian voices, particularly since Marie-Nicole Lemieux’s victory at the Queen Elisabeth Competition of Belgium in 2000. French scenes, then Berlin, Vienna, London, New York. “First Marie-Nicole Lemieux, Michèle Losier, Frédéric Antoun, Étienne Dupuis. Now it’s Emily D’Angelo…”
Bear witness
What seems important to Sylvia L’Écuyer, “is to follow our artists and see the remarkable way in which they present themselves elsewhere. I realized, a month ago, an interview with Rihab Chaieb who sang Satyagraha, by Philip Glass, at the Met. It was an exciting interview where she said: “The important thing is not to get hired, but to get rehired, so you have to be ready and be a good comrade.” Our singers work like crazy, they are ready, they are there. People like Tomislav Lavoie, with his big bass voice, he doesn’t sing leading roles, but he didn’t stop working for a minute. Neither does Florie Valiquette. I was so impressed by them, by their resilience”.
Beyond the operas, the Metropolitan Opera, it is this follow-up of Canadian artists that Sylvia L’Écuyer saw as the engine of her activity. “What matters to me fundamentally is to be hooked on what is happening now, here and in Europe. “Through her interviews, she wanted to “reflect the living news” according to a very methodical approach: “I made a calendar of our artists abroad, I carried out interviews and when the operas were available, I diffused them . »
Because the Metropolitan Opera does not occupy the antenna all the year: “Off season of the Met, I selected the best European productions, in priority those which starred our artists. It very quickly became the only way to present our artists on stage, since we no longer recorded them here. »
The very format of the show lent itself to the exercise. If the intermissions were reserved for the protagonists of the broadcast production, “after the opera, I spoke about the news on our operatic stages across the country, with interviews of artists, then I spoke in Europe to other artists who produced there. So, I covered the news all over the place”.
In limbo
This intense activity only leaves more regrets: “Your articles are in the archives of the To have to, and you can easily find them on the Internet, but for me, all of that is only on my hard drive and in the non-accessible archives of Radio-Canada. Indeed, due to broadcast rights, an opera from the Met cannot be left online and a European opera stays there for only seven days. However, for technical reasons, the interviews, thus lost in limbo, are not dissociated from the overall thread of the program and are therefore not accessible in isolation for replay. “I did series on Robert Lepage, Yannick Nézet-Séguin before and after his appointment at the Met… Not to mention that Renée Fleming, Roberto Alagna or Natalie Dessay spoke many times at my microphone”, sighs Sylvia L’Écuyer. There remains the hope of a book, one day.
This should not discourage Sylvia L’Écuyer, who wrote a doctoral thesis on writings on music, of Joseph d’Ortigue, a critic, friend of Berlioz. “I have read 40 years of newspapers of all kinds! This D’Ortigue reviewed, among other things, all the operas presented in Paris at the time. This is how she approached opera, through a period when Rossini was the undisputed star. During his years at Radio-Canada, before Place at the opera, Sylvia L’Écuyer has presented concerts and prepared documentary series, notably on Berlioz and on the history of music on the radio since the 1920s. both networks. But this is not my hour of glory: I was not an administrator. »
If Sylvia L’Écuyer is leaving today, it’s because she’s “the only one [sa] gang still working at 73. But she quickly brings another perspective: “During the last year, I did not have the means of production of the previous years. When I started, I had an associate director, a researcher, someone who took care of the technique, someone for the administration. We went from a team of four, to a team of three, to a team of two, to end up with a “team of Sylvia”. I wanted to keep bringing the same quality, and it was getting too difficult. Two people could help me in Montreal, but I had no one beside me. Just the Met broadcast, people don’t realize. We have a signal coming from New York in English, we are sent a roadmap, and I cover in French. So, not only do I do the introductions, but it has often happened this season to have two intermissions of 33 and 35 minutes. So it’s as if I was preparing four shows. Putting it all together, I couldn’t do it anymore. »
fight again
From these years, Sylvia L’Écuyer treasures her 12 summer stays in Wexford, Ireland. “I went there for the first time in 2008 for the opening of a 780-seat hall right in the center of the old town. The philosophy of this festival, founded in 1951, is to present only very little known operas and young artists. We discovered Juan Diego Flórez, and more recently Lise Davidsen or Angela Meade. »
Sylvia L’Écuyer has also attended the major festivals of Aix, Salzburg and Bayreuth. “It was my vacation, obviously not on a mission commissioned by Radio-Canada! I have often been hired to do reports for Opera News At New York. At Wexford I also wrote program notes for very rare operas. As musicological research was my baggage, I was able to write articles on The king in spite of himself of Chabrier or Salome by Antoine Mariotte. These commissions allowed me to cushion some of these trips which allowed me to see different, interesting and more original stagings than what we see at the Metropolitan Opera, for example. »
A great blow was struck when The Saturday Opera was removed from the Espace musique schedule in 2013 to become Place at the opera, broadcast on the Internet on Saturday afternoon and on the radio on Sunday evening. “The public struggled to make the transition. In 2013, he was not necessarily equipped to connect to the Internet on Saturday afternoons to listen to opera. And it was put on the radio on Sunday nights, where there is the fiercest competition, with Everybody talks about it, the show you need to see to be able to make a conversation on Monday morning. Many people complained, but it continued. Today, on the other hand, a certain audience is in no way disturbed: “It is wrong to think that only an older audience is interested in opera. And younger audiences aren’t too handicapped by going online to catch music or opera. In general, Sylvia L’Écuyer thinks that we have not touched bottom, that we still have to fight for the place of classical and lyrical music on the radio. “Yes, we still have to fight and not only here. My husband is English and sees what is happening on the BBC. I watch the evening concerts here. We went from five to four. They are reduced to three this summer. »
Will Sylvia L’Écuyer’s work be taken over by someone else? “I have no insurance of any kind. On the other hand, the letter that CarolineJamet [directrice générale, Radio, Audio et Grand Montréal chez Radio-Canada] sent clearly says that what I started will be continued and that there will be a presence of lyrical art on the air. But no further details. »
The animator will continue during her retirement her activity at the Society for the Arts in Healthcare Environments. But first, she will cultivate her garden, travel to listen to opera, walk in the Dordogne and go kayaking. “I don’t need music all the time, I’m a nature girl and I’m fine in the woods. »