The pit and the pendulum

>> Boy wonder Yannick Nezet-Seguin walks the OdM through Lakme

By RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Was Yannick Nezet-Seguin born with a silver conductor's baton in his fist? "Almost," he laughs. "I picked it up when I was ten." A mere 14 years later, 24-year-old Nezet-Seguin is the boy wonder of Montreal's classical music scene. Since September '98, he's been the assistant conductor and chorus master at l'Opera de Montreal. As well, he's the musical director of the Choeur de Laval, and has done hit-and-run conducting gigs for the OSM and Les Grands Ballets. Not bad for someone who really should be telemarketing off his student loan.

On Sunday, Nezet-Seguin makes his debut as conductor for the OdM, tackling the role of human metronome for a contracted performance of Lakme. The opera, composed by Frenchman Leo Debiles and based on a book by Pierre Loti, concerns a young Hindu woman and her love for a British colonial officer in Kipling's India of yore. Enter Lakme's dad, a Brahmin priest with a sore spot for foreigners. Throw in bloodthirsty tradition, poison flowers and broken hearts and baby, you've got some opera going on.

Nezet-Seguin says that, while rarely performed and scarcely ever recorded, Lakme is "nonetheless a work that has survived.

"It's very typical of France of the end of the last century, because of its focus on local colour, on exoticism. The music itself owes a lot to pseudo-exoticism--modal scales, the timbre. That was very a la mode at the time, but I think it's a work that has aged well." Nezet-Seguin notes that the theme of cross-cultural romantic complications is still a very viable subject.

As for the fact that Lakme will be presented in concert form only, Nezet-Seguin seems a bit relieved. "It's a bit dangerous to do Lakme with costume and decor. Not that I'm against it, but it can often come off as kitsch. The exotic colour, what the writer and composer saw in their heads when they imagined India at the end of the last century, a sort of paradise on earth with towering plants, rich scents and humidity--that's all suggested in the music." :

At Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, Place-des-Arts on Sunday, January 23, 2pm. Tickets start at $18.50