“I wish to tell you that this is the last time I shall sing for you”

Dear friends, It is with a little sadness but mostly excitement that I invite you to the last exhibition at Espace Maurice. Please join us on Saturday March 29th, from 6 to 9 pm for the opening of Greetings, Mary Garden, a three person exhibition featuring works by Christopher Gambino (New York), Paula McLean (Toronto) and Matt Morris (Chicago).

** There was never a particular reason for the scallop shells. It wasn’t a sailor’s idea. Nor were they a tradition pulled from Grecian mythology, or medieval sorcery. It wasn’t as if they took the mermaid’s brassiere and turned it into two lampshades. Lights could only line the stage the way they did at the time and so it was only natural to open the shellfish, to hold the flames up from their bellies, facing the feet of the divas –the goddesses. How would you have caught a glimpse at the operatic voices, otherwise? How would the mouths

have emanated such a sound? Without the fish, the light and the brass fixtures made like shells… It had never occurred to me that the mother of pearl had a sound. That the oceanic breath of the shell was a voice. I suppose it is only natural then, that the divine singers would proudly stand above them, amplified. Exhaling and inhaling the pearlescence into song.

Some have said that the shells had a distinctive smell. The warm brass couldn’t help but mix to the shadows of the red velveteen seats and the cold tobacco on the satins and leathers of the theatre goers. Operas each have their nuances. Chicago certainly couldn’t have been quite as dirty a smell as Paris. It hadn’t been around long enough. Mind you this wasn’t about the purity of the water or the cow fat soaked in roses. Although that certainly played its part in igniting the senses. The night time has always been the best time to conjure pheromones, anxieties and fears. At the foot of the stage, even the voice seemed to come with its own distinctive musk.

I have heard of lovers changing scents as desires dissolve. Their skin turning, like yogurt, from a yeasty ferment. They say some of the legends of the stage barely broke a sweat – all those nights in a row turning heartaches and longing into song. This unnatural mastery of the voice, some dominance over oxygen. From the moment I first found out about Mary Garden (the opera legend), all I can think about is how a diva never exits the stage under someone else’s order. Often, her last performance is the penultimate one, and it is her mastery over her ending that makes it last.

Garden herself, would eagerly admit: it takes more than a voice to leave a lasting impression.

**

— Marie Ségolène C Brault