DISAPPEARANCE – With his almost supernaturally flexible vocals and his impressive stage presence, the Belgian artist was one of the most promising voices of the beginning of the century.
« I won’t have enough of one life »she declared in November 2021 in a major interview with Opera Magazine . Evoking her thousand and one projects for the future – transmission, staging, production – with the gluttony and appetite for life that characterized her so well. Soprano Jodie Devos has just passed away. Only 35 years old. Leaving behind her the French-speaking lyrical world, and the planet of music lovers, in a state of complete astonishment and disbelief.
Suffering from devastating cancer, she had to cancel several of her recent commitments. And in particular his participation in The Olympiad by Vivaldi directed by Jean-Christophe Spinosi, which will close the season of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in a few days as a prelude to the Paris 2024 Games. It was surrounded by her loved ones and her family that she died this Sunday, June 16 2024, in Paris, announced its agency Intermezzo.
An exceptional voice
Since its second prize at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, coupled with a well-deserved Audience Award, coloratura with stratospheric highs and infectious good humor has literally enchanted our French stages. Of the singer, we will remember the purity of a voice with clarity as dazzling as the southern sun. The almost supernatural flexibility of his vocalizations. But also and above all the overwhelming presence. On stage, she radiated in every sense of the word. Sharing with his idol Natalie Dessay the same passion for theatrical performance above all else. « For me, it was the theater that I immediately liked over the opera »she told us when we met her in 2019 at the Opéra Bastille.
Because she had made French opera one of her great specialties. Whether it is about defending like no other the repertoire so long despised by Offenbach, of which she was a fiery ambassador. Agile timbre and ardor of feelings. Alternating with joyful pyrotechnic ease the craziest vocalizations and suave melancholy. As on his breathtaking album Offenbach Colorature, published in 2019 by Alpha. Or to embrace the Ramist cause, as she did at the start of the same year, by participating in the Paris Opera’s new production of Gallant Indies by Rameau. Alongside all the talents and hopes of the young generation of French and Francophone singers: Sabine Devieilhe, Julie Fuchs, Mathias Vidal, Stanislas de Barbeyrac, Florian Sempey, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Alexandre Duhamel…
Perfectly integrated into the French lyrical landscape, the former academician of the Opéra Comique shared the same concerns with these illustrious colleagues of her generation. And above all the same generosity towards the youngest. She did not hesitate for a second to get involved in the Unison Fund, set up in the midst of the Covid epidemic, to help very young opera singers deprived of stages.
She was also a fervent ambassador for the dissemination of operas to the widest possible audience, through all means, from recordings to participatory operas. « I grew up an hour and a half by car from any opera, I discovered the genre thanks to the Internet, she liked to recall. We are always afraid that opera audiences will disappear. This duty of dissemination is now part of the job. »
Great coloratura roles
The native of Libramont, in the Walloon region, only arrived at the opera late. During teenagehood. After first dreaming of being a variety singer. Nurtured in her family and by her choral singing courses in French song and the rock of Led Zeppelin or Freddy Mercury (to whom she also paid homage on the record in 2021, in her album And love said…) She had made her singing debut at the prestigious Institut Royal Supérieur de Musique et de Pédagogie in Namur, before joining the Royal Academy of Music in London, where, she said, she had notably caught the stage bug. She transmitted it to the public with an infectious passion.
In France, we saw her stand out in a very large repertoire on most of our stages. In Paris and in the region. Making a resounding entrance through the front door in 2014, replacing at short notice, when she was only an academician at the Salle Favart, the ailing soprano Sabine Devieilhe as Adèle, in The bat by Strauss. From then on, the path was clear towards major coloratura roles: Lakmé at the Tours Opera in early 2017, Suzanna at the Royal Opera of Liège in 2018, Queen of the Night at Bastille in 2019, Zerbinetta in Montpellier in 2020. ..
And of course a lot of Offenbach: Eurydice d’Orpheus in the underworldOlympia in The Tales of HoffmannPrincess Elsbeth in FantasyGabrielle in the sublime reconstruction of the original 1866 version of Parisian lifeproduced by the Palazzetto Bru Zane (center of French romantic music) of which she was one of the most convinced and convincing collaborators.
With Jodie Devos, the opera world is not only losing one of its most promising coloratura sopranos of the 21st century… It is also losing one of the most eminent ambassadors of French singing there is.