Théo IMART

Laureate of the Jardin des Voix, 9. edition (2019)

"What I lived in first place with Le Jardin des Voix is an encounter, an encounter with an ensemble and its directors, and the singers of my edition, these singers who are from different backgrounds, different countries, different cultures. All this creates a really singular and extraordinary cocktail. This meeting came a year after my studies, it was a little the apogee of all the work done during my course, and it brought a lot of joy and knowledge. I was able to understand, feel, and express the confidence that Arts Florissants had in me. I was able to learn from their experiences, their knowledge, and to sing with these instruments that are so rarely heard in opera houses, these instruments that really have such remarkable character and expression. And this whole set of new data has been prodigiously important for my professional life, but also for my personal life.
Then I'll talk about a particular memory. It's more than an anecdote, it's a feeling that was given to me by the audience. When you're on tour, there are many stressful moments. I can almost see myself panicking when I enter the stage, whether in Nantes or in Moscow... And then when the music starts, at the sound of the first note that I have to interpret, this stress is transformed into emotion, and goes into the expressiveness of my character. And finally, at the end, it is this memory that I have, and in this difficult period, it is even more striking, it is the memory of the people who stand up, who applaud, the bursts of bravos that you hear in the room, This feeling of accomplished duty where you finally understand that you don't want to do anything else than this job, you really say to yourself "I don't want to go anywhere else, I want to do this", whereas our whole musical path, our studies, is a path of doubt, of stress, that you find even just before going on stage. And at the end it's the apotheosis, a kind of moment of grace, where you feel that for the first time in your life you finally touch happiness. That's what the Jardin des Voix is all about."

(Théo Imart, 2021)