Accompanied by the renowned pianist Daniel Blumenthal, contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux sings twelve poems by Charles Baudelaire, taken from the poetry collection Les fleurs du mal, with music by Charpentier, Fauré, Chausson, Debussy, Duparc and Léo Ferré. At her side, the great actor Raymond Cloutier embodies the poet, narrating his life, Paris, the Second Empire, the origin of some verses and reciting a few poems and prose pages from the man who brought literature into modernity. An evening full of music and poetry ! An evening where ‘‘ There all is order and beauty, luxury, calm and voluptuousness’’. (Baudelaire)

Biography of Marie-Nicole Lemieux
It is no wonder that Marie-Nicole Lemieux shines today in the world of singing: the singer like the woman radiates an aura that belongs only to the greatest.

Her vocal talents were revealed to the public in 2000 when she won the Queen Fabiola and Lied Prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Belgium.

She then began an international career that has led her to the world’s most famous stages: La Scala, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, l’Opéra National de Paris, the Champs Elysées, the Capitole de Toulouse, la Monnaie in Brussels, the Staatsoper in Berlin, Munich and Vienna, Zurich Opera, the Theater an der Wien, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Liceu of Barcelona, the Salzburg Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Chorégies d’Orange, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, the Montreal Opera…

Her powerful voice, her superb sense of line and a faultless virtuosity as well as her sense of nuance and drama allows her to triumph in various repertories. The beginning of her career is marked by baroque music (Orphée by Gluck, Giulio Cesare, Ariodante, Orlando Furioso, Solomon, Theodora…). The evolution of her voice soon allowed her to take on the French repertoire of the XIXth century (Les Troyens, Pelléas et Mélisande, Samson et Dalila, Carmen…), Rossini (Guillaume Tell, Tancredi, L’Italiana in Algeri…) and also Verdi (Mrs. Quickly in Falstaff, Azucena in Trovatore, Ulrica of Ballo in Maschera…)

Alongside her stage career, Marie-Nicole Lemieux is invited to sing the great symphonic repertoire with prestigious orchestras.

She is acclaimed as a peerless recital artist with an exceptional vocal palette having a special talent for French and Russian songs, as well as German lieder.

Her discography is rich and varied. In 2017, she has started a collaboration with Warner Classics, with a program dedicated to Rossini.

Marie-Nicole Lemieux is a Knight of the National Order of Quebec and a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of the Pleiade. She also has a Doctor Honoris Causa from the Université du Québec at Chicoutimi.