A landmark of Québec theatre, Albertine en cinq temps – L’opéra follows one woman at five stages of her life, as memory, identity, and emotion collide. This new operatic adaptation brings Michel Tremblay’s powerful work to the stage in an intimate and striking form. This production brings a defining work of Canadian theatre to the operatic stage.
Albertine en cinq temps – L’opéra is one of Québec’s most celebrated plays, written by Michel Tremblay in 1984. A landmark of Québécois theatre, the work centres on an ordinary working-class woman whose life unfolds across decades marked by social constraint, personal struggle, and emotional intensity.
The play is written in joual (a distinctly Québecois dialect of French) and is deeply rooted in the cultural and social shifts surrounding the Quiet Revolution, a period that reshaped Québec’s identity, religion, and family life. Tremblay’s work gives voice to women whose experiences were often overlooked, capturing both the intimacy of domestic life and the weight of broader societal change.
This new operatic adaptation, created by a collective of artists led by Nathalie Deschamps with music by Catherine Major, transforms Tremblay’s powerful text into a musical work for six singers and five musicians. It is the first opera written in joual, preserving the immediacy and emotional texture of the original while opening it to new expressive possibilities.
Synopsis
Originally premiered in 1984, Michel Tremblay’s acclaimed play Albertine en cinq temps follows 70-year-old Albertine as she spends her first night in a retirement home reflecting on the defining moments of her life. Through encounters with her younger selves—including Albertine at age 30, already consumed by a rage she fears even the vastness of the sky cannot contain; the audience witnesses a lifetime shaped by love, loss, and resilience.
Albertine embodies a generation of Quebec women raised in the Catholic working class before the Quiet Revolution transformed the province. In the decades since the Grande Noirceur (“Great Darkness”), women’s rights have expanded, family life has evolved, religion has lost much of its influence, and Quebec society has changed dramatically. Yet Albertine’s anger still resonates. Are the choices and struggles facing her children truly so different from her own?
This powerful story of a woman searching for freedom while navigating her emotions and a society that has long sought to confine her inspired producer and director Nathalie Deschamps and the collective of women behind the project to adapt Tremblay’s landmark play as an opera. Set to an evocative score by Catherine Major with a libretto by Collectif de la Lune Rouge, Albertine en cinq temps – L’opéra is the first opera written in joual, Quebec’s distinctive French vernacular. Performed by six singers and five musicians, the work was created to celebrate the 80th birthday of one of Quebec’s most beloved authors and playwrights, Michel Tremblay.
Because, in one way or another, we are all Albertine…
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Albertine en cinq temps- L’opéra
Based on the play Albertine en cinq temps by Playwright Michel Tremblay
Composer Catherine Major
Librettist Collectif de la Lune Rouge
Stage Director Nathalie Deschamps
Original idea Les Productions du 10 avril
CAST:
Albertine at 70 years old: Chantal Lambert
Albertine at 60 years old: Monique Pagé
Albertine at 50 years old: Chantal Dionne
Albertine at 40 years old: Florence Bourget
Albertine at 30 years old: Catherine St-Arnaud
Madeleine (Albertine’s sister): Marianne Lambert