COMPETITION GALA CONFIRMS THE RESULTS
Canada versus South Korea: This was my initial characterization of the Montreal International Musical Competition.
We know the outcome: South Korea 2, Canada 1, and in that order. Tenor Keonwoo Kim, 29, takes the $30,000 first prize; soprano Hyesang Park, 26, the $15,000 second prize; and soprano France Bellemare, 27, the $10,000 third prize.
Several special awards, each worth $5,000, were announced on the occasion of the gala last Friday at the Maison symphonique. Anaïs Constans, 26, of France won the prizes for Lied/ French art song and for the best semifinal recital; Bellemare, not surprisingly, was acclaimed the best Canadian and best artist from Quebec, being the only finalist who qualified; while Park won the People’s Choice award.
Constans, Vasil Garvanliev, 30, and Takaoki Onishi, 29, the unranked finalists, each received $2,000 for their troubles.
The post-competition gala is always useful as a pressure-off confirmation of results that are already known. Park backed up her second prize with the Mad Scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Je veux vivre from Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette. Smooth, sweet, petite, expressive, attractive and well trained, this coloratura seems just a couple of French lessons away from the circuit.
All the same, the singer who struck me as the one I most want to encounter again — and indeed probably will — was Bellemare. Here was a warm, enveloping voice, full of pathos and marshalled to powerful effect in Rachmaninoff’s Georgian Song. Too bad this was all she was given to sing.
Kim, the victorious tenor, certainly had plenty of work in Ah, lève-toi soleil from Roméo et Juliette and showpieces from Donizetti’s La favorita and Rossini’s La Cenerentola. Musicality: check. Expression: check. Stage presence: check. Does he have gold in his throat? I heard silver. Which, of course, is a widely accepted currency.
Perhaps a more subjective reservation is my suspicion that Kim will pursue a career singing athletic bel-canto roles rather than music I really want to hear. But this gentleman is a tenor, and tenors are in demand. Coloraturas (like Park) and lirico-spintos (like Bellemare) are easier to come by.
Had there been an award for most onstage shenanigans at the gala, it would have gone to Garvanliev, a Torontonian of Macedonian birth who winked and smiled his way through Don
Giovanni’s Serenade, crouching down at one point and concluding the performance with a kiss blown to the audience. All this in contrast to his orderly, hands-at-the-waist performance of the same number in the finals, where his only defiance of convention was to leave his collar unbuttoned.
Interesting. It would be easy to take the high road on this kind of thing. Yet here was an effort to make a production of what would otherwise have been a brief, familiar aria decently sung and quickly forgotten. Garvanliev, we are now likely to say. Oh, yes, him.
About Bellemare: She studied at the Conservatoire de musique et d’art dramatique du Québec with Lyne Fortin and the late Hélène Fortin, and at Université Laval with Michel Ducharme. A two-time recipient of the Jacqueline Desmarais Foundation bursary, she sang the role of the unnamed protagonist in Poulenc’s monodrama La voix humaine with the McGill Chamber Orchestra in February. This was a collaboration with the Atelier
lyrique of the Opéra de Montréal, of which Bellemare was a member. She is not unknown.
The pit orchestra for the competition was the OSM under Johannes Debus, music director of the Canadian Opera Company. Both performed admirably. I was surprised to see a ringer from the Orchestre Métropolitain, Marie-Andrée Benny, in the principal flute seat for the Mad Scene from Lucia. Splendid job. Tim Hutchins was back in the second half (which opened with the Intermezzo from Carmen). Ditto.
One idiosyncrasy this year was the absence (noted on the competition website but unexplained) of an original “imposed” piece written by a Canadian and required from all the contestants. This is an important and revealing element of the competition and (not incidentally) a useful means of giving new music an airing. Let us hope it makes a comeback in 2016, when the MIMC will be devoted to the violin.
Nathan Brock, the OSM’s assistant (then resident) conductor
from 2009 to 2014, will take a similar position at the Hamburg State Opera, where his Montreal boss, Kent Nagano, starts a fiveyear stint as music director in September. The position includes work in ballet, as well as opera and symphony. As a regular guest of the National Ballet in Toronto, Brock knows his way around the genre. One of his most intriguing assignments will be taking the reins of a ballet version (by John Neumeier) of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie after Nagano conducts the première in July 2016.
A Toronto native, Brock speaks German, having trained in Zurich.
“This is a great opportunity to expand my horizons,” he says of the Hamburg job. “Getting to work in this theatre, with its storied tradition, will be a completely immersive experience. And the thought of living in the city where Brahms grew up and where Mahler was the last Kapellmeister of the opera house is truly inspiring.”