The tragic poet, Claude Gauvreau, born in 1925, riled against,
Catholicism, repression of all kinds and the fact that words never really
correctly express the deep feelings of people. In fact, Gauvreau created his
own language, “exploréen”. A genius out of synch with his time, a misfit, and a
being not born for human banality, he became a great poet who was largely
ignored, unfortunately. We saw a clip of him in the third act of this weird but
wonderful evening where he is reading his poetry to a small crowd of people at
Théâtre Gésu in Montreal.
He committed suicide – some say and others say he fell off his roof.
Undoubtedly, he was a man in extreme turmoil. Acerbated beyond repair when his
muse/actor, Muriel Guilbault committed suicide –an artist with whom he
collaborated in creating the play, “Bien-être”. He was so obsessed with her
that when she died, he saw his sanity slip; Mr. Gauvreau ended up in an insane
asylum at one point in his life.
The concert I saw featured the heart-wrenching music composed by,
another genius, Walter Boudreau – recent winner of Governor General Prize in
the Spectacle Arts in the classical music category.
The piece we heard first
performed on piano by Alain Lefèvre was macabre and magnificently dark. When
Matthieu Fortin, joined him to recreate the piece with four hands, the breadth
and terror in the piece became so evident. No one would ever play the work without
being a virtuoso pianist – and then some.
The composition stunningly brought to the ear and eye how insanity can
be translated into a musical score.
The opening of the concert had slow-moving zombies wearing white masks
onto the stage. An incredibly large improvised instrument with a myriad of
strings tightly taught to a middle spoke ushered in sounds of horror and
melancholy as actor, François Papineau took the stage ranting as a mad man.
While he acted out his madness, André Pappathomas (the gifted leader of these
“zombies” – the singers are actually the choir of Mruta Mertsi) played the huge
stringed instrument that stood like a huge door. His fingers nimbly traveled al
over the strings that looked like a spider web in terms of their placing on the
spoke. His fingers became spindly-type spiders traveled all over the “web’. It
was amazing to watch and listen to.
In my mind, the evening belonged to Alan Lefèvre and his partner on the
other piano, Matthieu Fortin and of course to Mr. Boudreau who sat slightly in
front of the two pianos as he conducted the two awesome artists.
It was an evening where geniuses unite. Is it possible that genius is
synonymous with madness? In the case of Soirée à L’asile, it certainly was.
What an astounding concert!
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