Classical music is not used to stripping. And in this world of often rigid codes, we rarely reveal on stage naked, sexual, transsexual or asexual, desired, desiring or desirable bodies, which harbor divine voices.
For the show (nu.es), presented free of charge on Saturday at the Maison de la culture Janine-Sutto, the director of the vocal ensemble Les Rugissants, Xavier Brossard-Ménard, has chosen to dare. Daring to bet on the intimacy, vulnerability and sexuality of the seven members of its ensemble.
Traditionally, Les Rugissants explore more the classical repertoire, explains Mr. Brossard-Ménard in an interview. But for the occasion, the set will resolutely cross genres. In every sense of the term. With costumes, videos and staging, we will go from Georges Bizet to Serge Gainsbourg, from Henry Purcell to Michel Berger and Lady Gaga.
The team had to face many unforeseen events, including the absence (due to COVID-19) of guest soloist Rose Naggar-Tremblay, crowned revelation of the year in classical music by Radio-Canada in 2022. skilful role-playing that fits perfectly with the subject of the show, the staging has placed in extremis the recording of her angelic voice in a male body in order to deliver Near the walls of Sevilleby Bizet, in overture.
But it’s probably with I love you…me neither that the ensemble really breaks the ice, reinterpreting Gainsbourg’s classic for six voices, each more languid and daring than the next. While the explosion of a can of soda will mimic orgasm in this torrid popular tune, the six singers are no longer strangers. From scene to scene, they will reveal themselves more and more, physically and emotionally, inviting us suddenly to a sensual and enjoyable party, far from complexes and what will be said.
This show, like many others who have tackled sexuality head-on in this fall season, comes like a balm after the years of the pandemic far from physical and social contact, confined behind screens without heat and without smell. However, it had been imagined in 2018, said the artistic director of the choir in an interview.
After presenting the show Voices of Spain, Xavier Brossard-Ménard felt that something was missing in the whole: “The vulnerability that they show themselves. And for that, it was necessary to explore “the zones of comfort and discomfort”, he continues.
“The show is made to explore limits,” he says, and in the same breath, he illuminates the notion of consent. At the very end, when the bathrobes are undone, everyone will have decided what they want to show… For some, it will be a question of lowering a strap; for the others, to put themselves completely naked, explains the director.
Musically too, (nu.es) crosses genres. And we will spend here very festive Feverby Peggy Lee, to a particularly austere interpretation of You Want It Darkerby Leonard Cohen, passing by a very beautiful arrangement of Against each otherby Michel Berger, or by Lament of Ninfaby Claudio Monteverdi.
Everything is also part of the mission of the choir Les Rugissants, evening “to explore new forms for classical music”, proclaims Xavier Brossard-Ménard. Les Rugissants have notably worked on the production of classical music videos, and are preparing a project for the integration of music into architecture.
“I love music in general, and classical music speaks to me,” he says, adding that this “deeply current” form of expression is subject to “a form of snobbery that doesn’t serve us.”