Quebec contralto Rose Naggar-Tremblay gave a recital of songs on Wednesday evening at Bourgie Hall on the sidelines of the exhibition “Marisol: a retrospective” at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The singer confirmed not only her vocal qualities, but also the originality of her artistic approach.
It was not an ordinary vocal recital that Rose Naggar-Tremblay presented with her attentive collaborative pianist Julien LeBlanc, but a conceptual show, a “narrative recital”, as she defines it, entitled “Celles qui partent” and articulated in three parts : “waiting”, “departures” and “loneliness, death”.
Pictorial frame
The idea of a narrative recital is that poetic texts frame the Lieder and melodies. They are said by Chantal Lambert, the former director of the Montreal Opera Workshop. The subject is well described by the singer in a preamble (unfortunately not distributed, because it was an evening where we certainly had the texts sung but no printed program). Of Marisol, Rose Naggar-Tremblay says “Her gaze rests with a benevolent understanding on the women of her time and the daily scenes which crystallize on themselves. She does not denounce, she reflects. »
As a result, the singer wanted to “append her presence, like a mirror or like a balm, to different portraits of women and their desires. Those who wait, those who don’t know how to leave, those we left behind. » She talks about travel, the sea and mourning. Marisol’s life and the exhibition inspired texts by Rose Naggar-Tremblay, texts set to music by Luna Pearl Woolf, a cycle of three melodies, the second being entirely narrated (in spoken voice) against a piano background.
The show is magnificently intellectual and musical and the bond between the young singer and her former teacher, who became the narrator, is close. Julien LeBlanc does things very well, creating in The poem of love and the sea de Chausson the required climats leading to The Death of Love.
From the outset, Rose Naggar-Tremblay imposes an impressive presence, both physical (straight as an Egyptian statue) and vocal. The voice, rare, warm, full, deep, very well placed, is in magnificent form and captures interest immediately.
Paths for development
After the dazzle, as the recital begins with Brahms, Schubert and Schumann, we begin to listen to the words. And this is where we would dream that Christa Ludwig was still in this world to take such an artist to a higher level through her master classes.
THE Gretchen am Spinnrade (Marguerite au Rouet) by Schubert, for example, is one of gentle violence, of too much wisdom in the pronunciation of consonants, for example “z” in ” Herz » or “ss” in “ Kuss “. Obviously, the lyrics somehow interfere with the vocal breadth, but when the means are so sumptuous it doesn’t matter; you have to dare the text. And in any case (“Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt” by Schumann) German never forgives: there is a difference to be made between “ Page » (side) and « Seide » (silk): too soft a pronunciation leads to a bad meaning.
It is this balance between sound and words which, as we have said, makes the miracle of Marie-Nicole Lemieux’s Berlioz-Ravel disc. Rose Naggar-Tremblay has 20 years less of her career: you can’t have everything right away. It is therefore somewhat the same in French melody: everything does not always need to be ideally nourished vocally. Supreme art is a learned alchemy of voice, word, expression (and nitpicking: for example, in The craddles of Fauré, we pronounce the “e” in “diminishes”).
No problem regarding the beauty of the show, the intelligence of the artist, her extraordinary potential, but Rose Naggar-Tremblay, a major talent, must now be able to access the best master classes or international vocal mentors who will allow it to deploy its full potential. As it stands, it seems left to its own devices. It’s not time yet. Perhaps there are patrons listening…