Tributes to Jodie Devos, “a sun around which we gravitated”

“My big game was to make her laugh. We really liked laughing together.” But this Monday morning, it was sobs that stifled the voice of conductor Laurent Campellone. The director of the Tours Opera had known Jodie Devos for around ten years. Suffering from breast cancer, it was “She struggled for several months. I never once saw her complain, she almost gave strength to those around her. She was endowed with an empathy like one very rarely encounters in one’s life. . With a joy of living, until the end.” A memory: the wonderful record Offenbach Coloraturemulti-awarded, recorded with the Belgian soprano in 2018: “As soon as Jodie started singing, everyone understood that we were going to record a historic record. Every evening on stage, she offered something else, the reflections of her voice changed… It was a sun, and we had everyone seems to gravitate around her.”

First interested in dance, then the piano, Jodie Devos began singing at 16 years old. A student at the Institute of Music and Pedagogy of Namur, in 2013 she obtained a Master of Art to the Royal Academy of Music from London, in Lillian Watson’s class. Then, in 2014, everything accelerated: she won the Second Prize and the Public Prize in the very prestigious and popular Queen Elisabeth of Belgium Competition. With a stint, also, at the Académie de l’Opéra-Comique. “A fortnight ago, she was still teaching there. She told me that there were always miracles, and that she wanted to continue”, tells, moved, Louis Langréedirector of the Opéra-Comique, who directed Jodie Devos last November in Cincinnati. “Even though we knew it, we were stunned, sad, revolted. Until the end she had this smile, this frenzied optimism. She was an extraordinary colleague, a magnetic singer.”

Hard worker

“Jodie came into people’s lives and sowed pearls of happiness with her music. There was something so organic in her singing, so generous. She was very sociable, had an immense zest for life, an extraordinary energy emanated of her”, abounds the mezzo-soprano Eléonore Pancrazi, who was also her best friend. With hard work, perfectionism, “real demands on her voice. She never did things like a dilettante, worked like a tireless person.” “She never entered the stage without being extremely prepared, focused, and never left the stage without having given her all”agrees Laurent Campellone: “Jodie gave the impression of immense ease, thanks to incessant work.”

Beyond the Queen Elisabeth Competition, Jodie Devos has shone in a myriad of national competitions: the Bell’Arte Competition, the Thirionet Fund, Les Nouveaux Talents de l’Art lyrique, the Jacques Dôme Prize… Named “Young Talent Artist of the year 2015” by the International Classical Music Awardsshe sublimated all the roles she took on: in Lakme at the Tours Opera, at the Royal Opera of Wallonia in The Barber of Seville, The Child and the Spells at the Montpellier Opera…

Sublimated roles

In 2017, the soprano made her debut at the Paris Opera in the role of Yniold, in Pelleas and Melisande. In 2019, she played the Queen of the Night in The Magic Flute, directed by Robert Carsen, and Zaire in The gallant Indies by Rameau. Then, she made a remarkable Olympia in the Tales of Hoffmann, in 2020. “The Paris Opera pays tribute to the young and brilliant opera artist, who made work and joy the central values ​​of her career. Jodie Devos said she loved sharing her emotions and moments of happiness with the public so that He comes out with a smile on his face.”writes the lyrical institution today.

“I tried, but for the moment, I can’t listen to his voice again”breathes Laurent Campellone: “She had, moreover, that elegance that very great artists have. That of hiding a very great work, so that the public hears only the beauty.” Jodie Devos was to sing in The Olympiad by Antonio Vivaldi, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, from June 20.