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Louis Riel, UBC dress 2010, Photo: Evan Kreider

Deciphering Harry Somers’ Opera Louis Riel

By Réa Beaumont on 1 April 2017 150/375, Canadian Music, La Scena Spotlight, Opera

Louis Riel is one of the most important Canadian operas ever written. It was inspired by the life of controversial Métis hero Louis Riel (1844-1885) and events surrounding Canadian Confederation in 1867 that became defining moments in the country’s history. With a libretto by Canadian playwright Mavor Moore in collaboration with Jacques Languirand and music by Harry Somers, Louis Riel was premiered in Toronto by the Canadian Opera Company for Canada’s centennial celebrations and performed soon after at Montreal’s Expo ’67. Louis Riel is being programmed this year by the COC as a co-production with the National Arts Centre to…

Photo: Musée McCord

Cultural Rendez-Vous: Rendez-vous at the Museum

By Olivier Gentil on 1 April 2017 150/375, La Scena Spotlight, Multimedia, Visual Arts

It wasn’t easy to pick only a few of this season’s several visual arts exhibits. The exhibitions announced for the spring are all equally promising, ranging from nanotechnology and fashion to hockey. Here are some that you shouldn’t miss! Chagall: Colour and Music Rooted in the idea of “total art” — a perfect union between music and painting — that was so dear to famous artist Marc Chagall, this exhibit perfectly showcases the importance of colour and rhythm that is central to his works. Via decors, costumes, and paintings, this exhibit ingeniously succeeds in highlighting the importance of music in…

Entre Félix et Django, fourth album of Christine Tassan et Les Imposteures receives the Prix Opus for Jazz Album of the Year

The 20th edition of the Prix Opus

By Dino Spaziani on 1 April 2017 Arts Industry, La Scena Spotlight, Quebec Music

This February 7, 2017, it was a celebration of the excellence of performance and artistic creation and the Conseil Québécois de la Musique, under the presidency of Robert Leroux, thanked the artists who contributed. Collectif9, with their youth and dynamism, were entrusted with the opening performance by the CQM. This great ensemble demonstrated that classical music demands a lot of effort. Their interpretation of Brahms required an exceptional form and a collective discipline. And for 2016, young performers were not shy to take their place in the spotlight. Beth McKenna received the prize for the Concert of the Year – Jazz and World Music for Home Montreal. Ballet-Opéra-Pantomime, a young company, has been…

Clybourne Park: Eleanor Noble, Marcel Jeannin, Liana Montoro, Kwasi Songui, Photo: Andrée Lanthier

The metamorphoses of race, sex, violence, and hypocrisy

By Robert Kilborn on 1 April 2017 La Scena Spotlight, Theatre

Montreal’s Centaur Theatre presents two new plays that question our assumptions, challenge our complacencies, and mock our politically correct, self-congratulatory smugness. Morgan Freeman, the iconic, Oscar-winning American actor, doesn’t want your condescension. For him, an attitude of patronizing superiority – of disdain, even – inhabits the folds and air pockets of your blanket generalizations. “You’re going to relegate my history to a month?” the 79-year-old actor said during a 60 Minutes interview in 2005. “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.” Clybourne Park (2011) is a sharply pointed stick of black and white American history.…

Robert Charlebois

CMIM 2017

By Olivier Gentil on 1 April 2017 La Scena Spotlight, Piano, Quebec Music

“The cynical and tender spirit, a modern and unique thought, a characteristically Quebecois music, the star of this popular concert of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Robert Charlebois.” These are the words of Roger Bouchard, television host, in 1971. It happened 46 years ago at Montreal’s Place des Arts. At just 27 years old, the young Robert Charlebois, dressed in an original and colourful shirt – typical of the 1970s – was going to live the experience of the symphony orchestra. Today, he admits that he has never refused the opportunity to play with an orchestra. Probably one of the…

Bench statue of Glenn Gould in front of CBC building, Toronto

Glenn Gould and the Metaphysics of Music

By Robert Kilborn on 1 April 2017 Canadian Music, La Scena Spotlight

When listening to or performing music, many people have experienced the “oceanic feeling,” variously described as an altered state of consciousness, a sensation of limitlessness, an experience of eternity, oneness with the universe, an ideal dream where you are held in a weightless reverie and lose the boundaries of your self. French writer Romain Rolland (who coined the term) noted the presence of “le sentiment océanique” in mystics of all religious traditions. He believed that this feeling was the source of all religious energy, and that one may call oneself religious on the basis of this feeling alone, regardless of…

Rosie Dietmar at Mic, Window Horses. Courtesy of Mongrel Media

Cultural Rendez-Vous: Five Films to See This Spring

By Rebecca Anne Clark on 1 April 2017 Film, La Scena Spotlight

Window Horses Now in select theatres Ann Marie Fleming returns with her animated avatar Stick Girl as the title character in Window Horses: The Poetic Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming (French: La vie en Rosie), which has won almost a dozen prizes since its 2016 premiere, including a Canadian Screen Award. When Rosie, a sheltered Chinese-Canadian poet, is invited to appear at an Iranian festival, she will discover more than she’s prepared for in the land of poets. Sandra Oh stars alongside Ellen Page, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Don McKellar in a film that celebrates poetry, music, history, and diversity through…

Arturo Toscanini

Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957): The Greatest Conductor of Conscience

By Pierre Chénier on 1 April 2017 La Scena Spotlight, Orchestral

We celebrate the 150th anniversary of Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini’s birth and the 60th anniversary of his death in 2017. He had an epic start to his conducting career when, at 19 years of age, he replaced the conductor for a performance of Verdi’s Aida in Rio de Janeiro at the last minute and conducted the work by memory. He shaped the musical world and much more with his personality and convictions. Some of Toscanini’s major career highlights include conductor in residence at Teatro alla Scala in Milan between 1898 and 1908 and musical director at the same opera house…

Gabrielle Roy Saint-Henri 1945, Photo: BAnQ Vieux-Montréal, fonds Conrad Poirier

Cultural Rendez-Vous: Montreal Literary Events to Mark

By Rebecca Anne Clark on 1 April 2017 150/375, La Scena Spotlight, Literature

Promenade littéraire with the BAnQ Saturdays at 1:30 PM, Various neighbourhoods In collaboration with Tours Kaléidoscope, the Bibliothèque et Archives national du Québec offers guided walking tours of the neighbourhoods that inspired some of Montreal’s most iconic literature. May 27, the BAnQ’s own environs and Carré Saint-Louis take the spotlight, while June 3 is dedicated to Saint-Henri, the backdrop to Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute, and June 10 explores the setting of Michel Tremblay’s Plateau Mont-Royal Chronicles. While the tours are free, reservations are required, as places are limited. www.banq.qc.ca Blue Metropolis Festival April 24 to 30 Is reading a…

Al Jarreau

Industry News: April 2017

By Olivier Gentil on 1 April 2017 Arts Industry, Classical Music, La Scena Spotlight

Concert halls La Seine Musicale, a new concert hall located in Boulogne-Billancourt, west of Paris, will be inaugurated from the 18th to the 21st of April. Designed by Japanese architect Shrigeru Ban and Frenchman Jean de Gastines, this 170 million euro auditorium has a concert hall dedicated to classical music that can accommodate 1,150 people, as well as a large concert hall space called the “Grande Seine”, which is modular and can accommodate up to 6,000 people for shows of all kinds. For the event, none other than Bob Dylan will be present for a concert on April 21. The…

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