When, in 1966, it was decided to name la Grande Salle of Montréal’s Place des Arts, board members unanimously voted to name it Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier to honour the man known as the “grand man of music in Québec.”

La Grande Salle of Montreal’s Place des Arts was renamed Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier in 1966. Seating nearly 3,000 subscribers, this home to symphony, opera, and ballet was inaugurated on September 13, 1963 with Pelletier as guest conductor. The hall’s ambience and intimacy are equivalent to the great concert halls of Europe and America. [Photo, courtesy Orchestre symphonique de Montréal]

At the opening of that concert hall three years earlier, Pelletier, then 67, had been on hand to conduct the orchestra he had helped found – les Concerts symphoniques de Montréal (CSM). He called the event “the most moving time of my life,” though, as conductor at the Metropolitan Opera of New York and as guest conductor of numerous other orchestras throughout North America, he had experienced many other occasions to compete with it.

The Montréal opening of the 2,982-seat hall was the culmination of a dream that had begun in 1934 when some prominent French-Canadian families had asked Pelletier to help his native city organize a new orchestra. Despite a heavy schedule with the Metropolitan, which he had joined in 1917, Pelletier jumped at the chance to take part and the following January, the CSM gave its first concert.

That, however, was only the beginning of his dedication to helping his native city establish a worldwide reputation in the field of music. In 1936, he founded the Matinées symphoniques pour la jeunesse which he directed for the next 25 years. He also established, in 1936, the Montréal Festival, an annual festival that, during the 1930s, featured such outstanding works as Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis and Ninth Symphony, and Verdi’s Requiem. In 1940, he introduced to Canadians the opera Pelléas et Mélisande, featuring tenor Raoul Jobin in a leading role, one of his numerous discoveries in his 50-plus-years as a musician and conductor.

Born in Montréal’s east end in 1896, Pelletier was encouraged in his musical interests by his uncle, a local priest, who founded a band at the church and made Wilfrid, at age three, its mascot. An older brother introduced him to drums, and by age seven Wilfrid was not only performing with the band but knew most of the percussion instruments as well. His real interest, however, was piano, and a Mme. Françoise Héraly gave him free lessons since the family was poor (his father worked as a baker).

At 14, he was a pianist in the pit orchestra of Montréal’s Théâtre National. There he heard his first symphony orchestra and, at His Majesty’s Theatre, saw his first opera which was so thrilling that he decided he wanted to be a conductor. The following year he took his first step in that direction when the chorus master of the Montréal Opera Company hired him as a rehearsal pianist. In 1914 he won the Prix d’Europe contest sponsored by the Québec government, and later that year he went to France for the next two years to study piano, harmony, composition, and operatic coaching under, among others, Isidor Philipp, Marcel Samuel-Rousseau, and Camille Bellaigue.
 

Before his appointment in 1935 as first artistic director of les Concerts symphoniques de Montréal, renamed l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in 1953, Wilfrid Pelletier had been identified with New York’s Metropolitan Opera since 1917, rehearsing such operatic tenors as Enrico Caruso and Canada’s own Edward Johnson and establishing a global reputation as conductor of the Met’s Sunday Night Concerts. In a career spanning approximately sixty years, Pelletier conducted, among others, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Montréal, Québec, and Mexico City symphony orchestras. [Photo, courtesy Orchestre symphonique de Montréal]

On completing his scholarship, Pelletier decided to try his luck in New York where the Metropolitan Opera’s newly hired French conductor, Pierre Monteux, gave him the job of coaching singers for the cast of Samson and Dalila starring EnricoCaruso. The manager of the Met, Giulio Gatti-Caszza, was so impressed that he hired Pelletier for the season. He stayed for another 32 years (1917-1949).

Working under such famous conductors as Bodansky, Moranzoni, Sarafin, and many others, Pelletier rehearsed the equally famous singers of the period – Caruso, Bori, Ponselle, Tibbet, and another Canadian, Edward Johnson. Liked and highly regarded by everyone, Pelletier became affectionately known as “Pelly” and, in 1919, was named assistant to the musical director of the touring company. While on tour, he was invited to conduct his first opera, Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Other opportunities followed, and, in 1922, Pelly made his Met debut as conductor of Carmen. The same year he became conductor of the six-week summer opera season at Chicago’s Ravina Park, an appointment that continued for a decade.

Numerous appearances as a conductor continued throughout the next four decades. In 1926 he started conducting the Sunday Night concerts at the Met and, in 1934, conducted radio programs such as the “Packard Hour” and the “Chase and Sanborn” concerts on Sunday afternoons. By 1937, he was placed in charge of and conducted the popular “Metropolitan Auditions of the Air,” a program that led to the discovery of such outstanding vocalists as Leonard Warren, Robert Merrill, Eleanor Steber, Patrice Munsel, and Risë Stevens.

He was also discovering talent through his Matineés symphoniques pour la jeunesse in Montréal in 1935/36. When a youngster won a $25 prize for a little minuet composed for the piano, Pelletier made a point of obtaining the score, orchestrating it, having the symphony play it for the children at one of their concerts, and then introducing the young composer to the audience. “He had never heard a real symphony orchestra. He cried ... I cried ... everybody cried,” Pelletier later recalled. The boy, incidentally, became the well-known composer, Clermont Pepin.

A 1982 article by Eric McLean, a Montréal music critic, recalls the Maestro’s work with children. “He seemed happiest in the company of young people and the promising performance of a ten-year-old pianist could produce a sense of wonder in him, ”McLean wrote, later recalling one occasion when, although Pelletier was judging dozens of children playing the same obligatory Chopin waltz, he was moved to tears by one of the winning contestants.

In 1942, the Québec government asked Pelletier to organize a music conservatory in Montréal and appointed him director. Pelletier promptly hired world-famous teachers – a horn player from Toscanini’s NBC Symphony, a percussion player from the New York Philharmonic, Grandjany for the harp – all to the chagrin of the government that wanted him to hire local people. “I had in mind to build good musicians,” Pelletier told another Montréal critic in 1965, pointing out that eventually these teachers would be replaced by the graduates of the Montréal and Québec City conservatories, the latter opening also under his direction in 1944.

In 1950, Pelletier retired from the Metropolitan but continued in demand as a conductor. He took charge of the Orchestra symphonique de Québec and brought it to full professional status by 1963. He was guest conductor for numerous operas performed throughout the United States and, in 1951, replaced Arturo Toscanini as conductor of a Beethoven Wagner program with Helen Traubel as soloist. Two years later, as conductor of the New York Philharmonic Children’s Concerts, he became involved with children again for the next five years, turning that post over to Leonard Bernstein in 1958. In Montréal, his youth concerts appeared on Canadian television.

Appointed director of musical education in Québec and head of the musical department of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in 1961, Pelletier continued to be a guest conductor into his 70s, appearing at the World Festival of Expo ’67 as conductor of a gala concert marking the centennial of Confederation on July 1, 1967.

Viewed conducting l’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in the twilight of his career, Wilfrid Pelletier had a mission to instil a true love for symphonic music in a generation of young people who would carry his musical torch into the future. [Photo, courtesy Orchestre symphonique de Montréal]

He received numerous honorary degrees in both Canada and the United States, was made a chevalier de la Legion d’Honneurby France, named a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George by Great Britain, a knight of the Order of the King of Denmark, and, among other awards, made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1968. His name has appeared onnumerous record labels, including RCA and Columbia, with a selection of his 1930s recording of Verdi’s Otello included in a special RCA album, “Opening Nights at the Met,” released after the famous opera house moved to New York City’s Lincoln Center.

In April 1981, Pelletier was one of the Canadians recognized by the Met when it dedicated its annual ball to Canada “in honour of the contribution of Canadians to classical music and to opera,” and a month later he was in Montréal for an 85th birthday celebration. Married for a third time to American opera singer Rose Bampton in 1937, Pelletier continued to live in New York until his death in April 1982. Mayor Jean Drapeau of Montréal eulogized his life as one of “dedication, devotion, and generosity, a life of beauty.” He was buried at the Bampton family plot in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

Mel James