Albertine en cinq temps – L’opéra

Presented by The Belfry & Pacific Opera Victoria

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.