The world premiere of Ana Sokolovic’s latest work, Montréal cirque, comes Wednesday as part of a free outdoor concert at the city's Mount Royal Park.André Parmentier/Supplied
Ana Sokolovic has an unassailable belief in the power of music. “We’re in this period of human existence which has so many ugly things,” the Montreal-based composer says. “But at the same time, we should be conscious about good things which are happening, especially in the artistic world.”
Sokolovic’s latest work, Montréal cirque, will have its world premiere on Wednesday, part of a free outdoor concert at Mount Royal Park with Orchestre Métropolitain (OM) led by superstar conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. While OM’s summer concerts are always much-anticipated events on Montreal’s social calendar, this particular presentation is one thread in a larger tapestry of events stretching into 2027, all of them marking the park’s 150th anniversary. Designed by American architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the park (opened in 1876) is one of the city’s most popular outdoor destinations. Its sesquicentennial is being marked not only with music but via a myriad of happenings, including art walks, film nights, historical tours and a conference in early October exploring the area’s Indigenous presence.
The park is also where the Belgrade-born Sokolovic first visited as a newcomer to Canada. “It was probably my second day after I arrived in Montreal, in 1992,“ she recalls. “For me it was incredible to see.”
One of Canada’s most prolific and celebrated composers, the Juno Award-winning artist is perhaps best known for her 2011 a cappella opera Svadba – Wedding, a work weaving Balkan sounds within a narrative of wedding preparation. Performed over 50 times internationally (including at San Francisco Opera, Opera Philadelphia and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence), the work won a Dora Mavor Moore Award in 2012 for Outstanding New Opera. Her works have been presented at a range of fêted institutions and festivals, including the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Venice Music Biennale, the Diaghilev Festival (Perm), Beijing Music Festival and the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World New Music Days, hosted by Vancouver in 2017.
In 2022, she was awarded the first Canada Research Chair in opera creation at Université de Montréal, where Sokolovic is a professor of composition; she is also artistic director of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. In a Q&A on the Université’s website, she pushes back at the notion that Canada isn’t especially known as a land of opera: “It’s just not true! [...] We perform to sold-out houses. People are curious. And especially in Montreal, we have a unique concentration of artists.”
She credits her background, which includes training in ballet, with feeding her inspiration. The former Yugoslavia, she explains, was “where people passed through and brought their food and their culture, like the French word ‘rencontres’ – meetings. Not only the Balkans but the whole Mediterranean culture is very much influenced by carnivalesque culture; I find this very much present in Montreal also.”
Sokolovic pushes back at the notion that Canada isn’t known as a land of opera.Raoul Manuel Schnell/Supplied
The premiere of Montréal cirque comes amidst a year of important milestones for the composer, including the European premiere of her 2025 opera Clown(s) and the U.S. premiere of Concerto pour basson et sept cordes graves (2009). In mid-August You Can Die Properly Now (2024) will make its British premiere with soprano (and Canadian Opera Company Ensemble Studio member Emma Pennell) in Edinburgh, with Rafael Payare leading Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. The work is dedicated to Indigenous children who were part of Canada’s residential school system. “Music goes directly to the emotions,” she says. If she had one thing she would tell her students, it’s to be aware of “how the music can connect the people in different circumstances.”
In choosing the title Montréal cirque, Sokolovic was inspired by the physical shape of Mount Royal, and the lingering ideas within Clown(s). “Circus is a place where things happen” she says, “or many things could happen. We laugh at clowns, because they do the things we don’t want to do, or the things we are afraid of doing.” Mount Royal Park reflects this aspect of possibility and play. “There’s theatre pieces playing there at any given moment,” she says. “People are having barbecues, people are making love, people are watching sunset or sunrise; they are watching the river, going around, riding horses, interacting, meeting, arguing. Many things are happening; the piece reflects that.”
The premiere is part of a program that also includes another new work, Rêveries by Quebec composer Guillaume Couture. Hosted by ambassador Fabiola Nyrva Aladin, the concert will feature a special performance by Canadian Inuk artist Elisapie and the Petits chanteurs du Mont-Royal. The work marks the first time Sokolovic and Nézet-Séguin will have worked together.
In addition to being music director of the Metropolitan Opera and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin is also artistic director and principal conductor of Orchestre Métropolitain, and has worked with a number of famed classical institutions. Sokolovic recalls seeing the maestro conduct in his early days in Quebec, and has followed his meteoric rise in classical music ever since. “I was proud of him,” she says. “He is an amazing musician, but he’s so approachable, a normal human being – and this is also part of being Canadian: being part of the community, connected with every single person in the audience. I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of people will be [at the concert], but I know he will connect with all of them.”
That sense of connection is, she explains, part of music’s unique power. “When somebody dies, music is there; when somebody celebrates, music is there; when somebody is working, music is there,” she says. “It is the most abstract of all arts, and can make us smile or cry – or both, at the same time.”