A word from the Artistic Director and Stage Director Pauline Vaillancourt
On behalf of the Chants Libres team and its board members,
Dear friends,
Dear public,
The time has come to give you news, to launch into the future, even though all plans remain temporary and conditional during this fragile, surprising and unsettling time. As you know, our mandate of creation leads us to rise to challenges, even if that means deconstructing in order to reconstruct in a better way.
All of you who follow us- and I suppose you are among those who do since you are reading this message- know that we have now worked for four years on a creation that is full of desire for peace and humanity, L’orangeraie, inspired by a text by the internationally-renowned Quebecois writer Larry Tremblay. The creation was planned for October 2020 at Montreal’s Monument-National, with a reprise also anticipated in Quebec City.
The international premiere of L’orangeraie is postponed:
Joining me are the composer Zad Moultaka, the librettist Larry Tremblay, the 9 vocal performers, the Nouvel Ensemble Moderneand its 16 musicians, conductor Lorraine Vaillancourt, as well as the creators/designers Dominique Blain (scenography), Nancy Bussières (lighting), Catherine Béliveau (video), Marianne Thériault (costumes), Jacques-Lee Pelletier (make-up) and our faithful production team, all approving my wish to postpone by a year the premiere of this creation. And so we arrange to meet again in Montreal in October 2021! The Quebec City reprise will also be postponed until November 2021. More details will be announced for you over the course of the next few months!
More than anything else, we want to premiere this important and imposing work in your company, you our audience, and we hope that many of you will be there in the hall, vibrant and in lively contact with the artists, to highlight in a deep way the creation of this new opera of importance and to celebrate together the 30 years of our company.
In the meantime, we remain on our path. Our “creation mandate”, which we have shaped for many years, is now striving to manifest our presence in different ways, in harmony with public health requirements:
1 – A digital event in autumn 2020, involving my unanticipated staging of a performance built around excerpts from L’orangeraie, which will take place in the same location of the premiere, Montreal’s Monument-National, now deserted.
2 – Chant Libres’ 30th ANNIVERSARY BLOG, online already since September 2019 under the watchful eye of Guillaume De Pauw, will continue to guide us through our rich creation history, by programming a journey back to the seventeen operas already created and produced by Chants Libres (testimonies, interviews, video excerpts, photos, recollections, etc.).
I would like to take this moment to invite you to read the wonderful article about our 30 years, which appeared in the JOURNAL CIRCUIT (in French).
More details, clarifications and developments on what is to come will be sent to you in late August.
I hope that this exceptional situation that we are living won’t deprive us of your presence for too long, as it is so essential and beneficial to us.
In the meantime, I hope that this 2020-2021 that is called the “white year” in the operatic milieu, and that I will call “the year of combat” for our health, will be, despite all opposition, a year that is happy, patient and marked with philosophy.
Thank you for being faithful to us,
Pauline Vaillancourt
Photo: Manuel A. Codina
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