2023-09-16 14:15:10
Marine Chagnon, 30, will also be appearing in “Cinderella”, “Don Quixote” and “La Traviata”, for the 2023-2024 season at the Paris Opera. ROMANE BÉGON
At the entrance exam to the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique de Paris in 2014, Marine Chagnon encountered skepticism from the jury: why audition as a mezzo when her voice seemed sculpted like that of a soprano? At the second attempt, the following year, now a soprano candidate, other jurors in turn rejected her: they felt that her range flirted more with that of a mezzo… “The third time, I was joking, she says. It had become a joke with my friends: so this time? Tenor? Baritone? » Only the fourth, probably stimulated by the energy of despair, was the right one, that of admission.
Six years later, at just 30 years old, Marine Chagnon became “a mezzo-soprano, I care about both! “, in full bloom, driven by favorable word of mouth among opera lovers. Consecration: her 2023-2024 season will take place entirely at the Paris Opera, where she joins the opera troupe, a new pool of seven young hopefuls who will be distributed from one show to another from September to July 2024, both for their allow you to cut your teeth only to offer the public recurring faces.
“It’s an exceptional opportunity, rejoices the one who will perform Verdi (The Traviata) or Massenet (Cinderella et Don Quixote). Without that, I would never have been able to be cast as Zerline on stage for perhaps ten years…”
The candid peasant girl Don Giovanni by Mozart, given at Bastille from September 13 in a new creation by Claus Guth, is the role with which she inaugurates the year. Long rehearsals with her coach, Elène Golgevit, study of the direction, reading of analyzes and theses on the work… “I had never prepared so much for a role. » A patient and meticulous maturation which is necessary for it: “I cannot sing a work if I do not understand it theatrically, she explains. For me, at the opera, we don’t come on stage to see a singer but an actor who sings. »
Outwitting her young premiere traits
In addition to the flexibility of her voice, it is in particular this care taken in her playing and her expressiveness which have made her reputation, combined with a skillful way of thwarting her young premiere traits through incarnations of complex, tormented women. “I don’t like people to summarize Poppée [de Monteverdi] to its venality or that we show La Périchole [d’Offenbach] like a beguiled prey, she pleads, citing two roles she has taken on in recent months. Of Zerline, who marries before giving in to Don Giovanni’s advances, I would like to suggest that she is not so naive. »
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Daughter of a mother who was a researcher in food toxicology and a father who was a general director of services, Marine Chagnon grew up in Dijon without thinking of becoming “lyrical artist”, as she likes to present herself. Modern jazz lessons, theater option during his schooling, then joining the children’s choir of the Dijon Opera. “When the choir director started to give me solos, people didn’t talk to me about my voice but about the emotion they had listening to me. » She then senses the possibility of a different trajectory from the medical studies she is planning.
The conservatory to which she had to apply four times will in truth be the only hitch to her CV. Navigating among the institutions intended to nurture young shoots (Paris Opera Academy, Jaroussky Academy, Orsay-Royaumont Academy, etc.), Marine Chagnon, between two escapes to the Ile d’Yeu, where she likes to isolate herself , has already released a first album (Light: Swedish Songs, Swedish tunes accompanied by pianist Joséphine Ambroselli, released by Mirare in 2022) and benefited from a nomination as a revelation at the latest Victoires de la Musique Classique.
Mezzo, soprano, soprano, mezzo… Désormais, peu importe. “When I was 20, I was convinced like everyone else that you absolutely had to know who you were. And then, the day I met my coach, she had a formula that uninhibited me, telling me that I was not a voice with a range but a voice with roles. » Way to prefer marked routes to a larger playground to invent yourself.
Don Giovanni, by Mozart, directed by Claus Guth (3:20 a.m. with an intermission), at the Opéra Bastille, place de la Bastille, Paris 12th. From September 13 to October 12.
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