L’hiver attend beaucoup de moi
When L’hiver attend beaucoup de moiopens at Espace Go theatre for Opera de Montreal on March 19th, it will be ticking off an impressive scorecard of firsts. Not only will the evening mark the world premiere of this brand new Canadian chamber opera; it will also be the first time an opera written by a woman has had its premiere with the company, and only the second time OdeM has presented an opera by a woman (Ana Sokolovic´’s Svadba was the first in 2018).
L’hiver attend beaucoup de moi is also the first foray into opera by its three creators: composer Laurence Jobidon, librettist Pascale St-Onge, and director Solene Pare. Finally, going back to the work’s genesis, it was among the five winners of the inaugural 2018 Mecenat Musica Prix 3 Femmes award, a $25,000 prize facilitated by Musique 3 Femmes—the non-profit founded by Jennifer Szeto, Kristin Hoff and Suzanne Rigden—to support and develop new operas by all-female creative teams.
Excerpts from those five winning projects were workshopped at the Opera’s Changing Worlds training summit in Montreal in September 2018. I was in the, a dark, suspenseful story about two women, both domestic abuse survivors, trying to make it to a women’s shelter in the middle of a raging northern Quebec blizzard.
