Huguette Tourangeau, Mezzo-soprano (1938-2018)
Aimé Maillart: LES DRAGONS DE VILLARS (aka "DAS GLÖCKCHEN DES EREMITEN")
"Il m'aime, il m'aime, espoir charmant ..."
Conducted by Richard Bonynge / Recorded 1970

My personal opinion: The career of the French-Canadian mezzo-soprano Huguette Tourangeau was closely connected with the benevolence of Richard Bonynge and Joan Sutherland. A protégée of both, Tourangeau excelled in numerous joint performances on stage and in the studios. Perhaps the bond was too strong, with the result that Tourangeau was widely not regarded in public as an independent artistic personality. There was a hardly a recording or performance in which Bonynge and Sutherland were not involved in one way or another. And so it comes as no surprise that Tourangeau vanished from the international spotlight around the same time as Sutherland increasingly withdrew from her triumphant career ...
It began in the early 1960s, when conductor Wilfrid Pelletier asked Tourangeau to sing for his young colleague Zubin Mehta. Pelletier has founded the "Conservatoire de Musique du Québec à Montrèal" and was proud of the singers graduating from his school. The twenty-four-year-old Mehta invited Tourangeau to sing in Verdi's MESSA DI REQUIEM and to make a professional opera debut as Mercédès in CARMEN at the Montreal Opera House. Pelletier also arranged an audition at the Metropolitan Opera that Tourangeau won. In 1964, she landed the role of Cherubino in Mozart's LE NOZZE DI FIGARO at the Stratford Festival in Ontario - and the conductor was none other than Richard Bonynge. For the young mezzo, this meeting became the turning point in her career. "I was fortunate. I was at the right place at the right time ...", she later said. One year later, in 1965, she was touring with the Metropolitan Opera National Company, this time singing CARMEN and Suzuki in MADAMA BUTTERFLY. Some months after the tour, she met Bonynge again in New York. The maestro asked her to sing Mallika to the LAKMÉ of his wife Joan Sutherland in Seattle. It was the beginning of the long-lasting collaboration with La Stupenda and her charismatic husband ...
"Richard Bonynge loved my voice because of the ample medium range and the very low register. And he liked the quality of our voices together, Joan and I ... And he also liked the fact that I was so enthusiastic to take up new challenges. The more difficult the part, the more quickly I learned it." In the start, both ladies sang French operas together. Some day, Tourangeau was invited to the Bonynge's home in Switzerland, where the conductor coached her several weeks in the Italian bel canto repertoire. Eventually, together they prepared a solo recording of "Arias From Forgotten Operas" by Auber, Balfe, Bizet, Donizetti, Vaccai and Verdi. The album was issued in 1970.
To the present day, it's one of the most interesting recitals ever recorded, even if the program is not to everyone's taste. Tourangeau fondly remembers, that after each aria the musicians of the Orchestre de las Suisse Romande applauded: "It's really true, they reacted to my low register!" But very likely the program was too alien. At the time, who knew Michael Balfe's ILDEGONDA NEL CARCERE or Nicola Vaccai's GIULIETTA E ROMEO? Who knew Donizetti's L'ASSEDIO DI CALAIS or Auber's LE CHEVAL DE BRONZE? The LP became a commercial non-success. Meanwhile the reissued album is considered as pioneering work. A special attention deserves the aria "Il m'aime, il m'aime, espoir charmant" from Maillart's LES DRAGONS DE VILLARS. Already in the recitative, Tourangeau inserts a high E - an amazing achievement for a mezzo with a strong tendency towards contralto.
Subsequently, Huguette Tourangeau sang in many Sutherland-Bonynge productions: The Queen's page Urbain in Meyerbeer's LES HUGUENOTS, the handmaid Alisa in Donizetti's LUCIA DI LAMMERMOOR, Maddalena in Verdi's RIGOLETTO, Parséis in Massenet's ESCLARMONDE (probably Sutherland's best performance on records) or Nicklausse (like Urbain a trouser-role) in Bonynge's very strange edition of Offenbach's HOFFMANN. All parts were more or less supporting roles. Tourangeau's only lead was Thérèse in Massenet's forgotten French Revolution opera of the same name; certainly not a suitable topic to expose the mezzo-soprano in adequate manner. When Sutherland recorded her second NORMA in 1984, the chiefs of Decca insisted on more profitable names and chose soprano Caballé as Adalgisa - a slap in the face for Tourangeau. Thus, a 1972 San Francisco live recording of NORMA, with Sutherland and Tourangeau's Adalgisa, aroused a promising hope, which was not fulfilled by the record companies. Even if Huguette Tourangeau did not have the tonal fullness of a Ebe Stignani or the warmth of a Christa Ludwig, she was an empathetic singing partner - a pleasing contrast to Marilyn Horne's occasional prima donna behavior that turned sometimes a duet into a duel ...
Huguette Tourangeau died an April 21, 2018.

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