Once again, spring brings with it the excitement and expectations that accompany the approach of a new edition of the Festival de Lanaudière. The incessant turbulence of world affairs gives way to beauty, to encounter, to the ardor of celebration as well as to that of contemplation, in a space of refuge that is synonymous with freedom. Against a background that is sometimes murky, nagging questions seem to emerge, from which we can quickly no longer look away: who are we? What are our values? What do we want to be? The concerns about identity, so urgently present in the cultural, social and political discourse of our time, find their natural counterpart in us in the experience of alterity, the union of opposites that shapes the mosaic of existence.

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and Rafael Payare, once again spearheading our season, respond unequivocally, Hic et Nunc, With the extravagant Carmina Burana : we are here, now, and we are alive! The excessiveness of Carl Orff is opposed by Bruckner's spirituality and contemplation, including the Eighth symphony refers to the feeling of faith and the sacred. An exceptional event, the presentation of the two oratorios by Mendelssohn, a German Jew who converted to Christianity, offers the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin the opportunity to shine again on our stages, after the Beethoven residency in summer 2022. These concerts also mark a rare foray into sacred music at the Amphitheater.

Alterity, identity, plurality: all three unfold like so many threads throughout our program. The presentation by Yannick Nézet-Séguin of Tristan by Wagner, ahead of a new production at the Metropolitan Opera, becomes the metaphor for total love between two beings, for the alterity transcended by the experience of sexuality, both profane and sacred. At the same time, the Canadian debut of the extraordinary countertenor Franco Fagioli, in an evening built around the famous castrato Velluti, promises more than vocal fireworks: they demonstrate that opera is and was a space of freedom and fluidity, a canvas on which spectators and creators can draw fantasies and fantasies at will.

The return of Leonardo García Alarcón in the Coronation of Poppea by Monteverdi, after the triumph of his Orfeo two years ago, is another key moment in this edition. Néron and Poppea anticipate Wagnerian lovers by two and a half centuries and offer a completely different example of love-fusion, that of a solar but deleterious, transactional alterity, and which is open to politics, ambition and the exercise of power.

From there to Preludes and Fugues by Shostakovich, a vast prayer by a composer broken by the dictatorship recited by the sublime Yulianna Avdeeva, the distance is shorter than it seems at first glance. Around her, renowned artists reunite with the churches of the region, such as William Christie and Justin Taylor, in an extraordinary one-on-one between two musicians that nearly five decades separate; Alisa Weilerstein and InonBarnatan, Christian Tetzlaff, Christian Tetzlaff, or even Marc-André Hamelin and the Dover Quartet, all coming to meet the public in intimate and evocative places.

Finally, it is impossible to ignore the long-awaited return of Kent Nagano for two concerts with the OSM, that of Bernard Labadie and Les Violons du Roy — for the first time with the cellist Sol Gabetta — nor the first concerts with us by Yuja Wang, Chanticleer, or even by Veronika Eberle and Timothy Ridout, whose Mozartian dialogue is already the envy of capitals. musics from around the world.

If it is the multitude that makes civilization, George Steiner eloquently described free and liberal culture and education, “the path to Dignitas ”, the dignity of each individual in their uniqueness and nobility, in their humanity — a return to the best of self. In its wake, I would add: a counterweight to the inevitable brutality of commercial relationships, an antidote to violence and darkness. Let us grant it to ourselves and to others, let us go to the other. It's going to yourself.

Have a nice festival!

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