On wings of song: contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux reflects on her musical journey from Lac-Saint-Jean.

French-Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux has one of the most attractive personalities on the stage today, her natural ebullience and warm presence embracing audiences wherever she performs. There is no facade, no artifice, no empty posturing. The antithesis of a diva, she radiates a natural, unaffected elegance, punctuated by an infectious laugh and a sense of the theatrical that has her impersonating the likes of Edith Piaf at the drop of a hat. In conversation, she seems to welcome you almost as a family member, a sign perhaps of what family means to this prodigiously talented artist. "Yes, yes, yes, family is so important," she says in her charmingly accented English. "I'm always travelling, but it's important for me to go home and be with my family, and always to remember where I came from."

Since her big win, at the age of 24, at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition in Belgium, however, time at home with friends and family has become increasingly rare. Seven years on, at least 70 percent of her career is now based in Europe. "After the competition and my recording of Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso, I'm really well known in France. But I sing a lot in Berlin, Brussels and, of course, Canada--although not as much as I would like. But the problem is in the planning. In Europe, they plan three or four years in advance; in Canada, it is one or two years."

A glance at her schedule for the rest of this season and into the summer gives a sense of the geographic dimensions of her career right now. In March, she stars in a new production of Albert Roussel's Padmavati at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. After that comes Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande in Berlin (April), Vivaldi's Orlando in Amsterdam (May) and Verdi's Falstaff back in Paris (June). For the summer, she's booked for Beethoven's 9th Symphony in Paris (July) and Gounod's Faust at the Festival d'Orange (August). It sounds like a heavy schedule, but Lemieux takes it in stride. She has, she says, learned some lessons about scheduling the hard way. "After winning the Queen Elisabeth competition, it was really crazy, crazy, and after one year I was so exhausted. In 2001, in October, I was on the edge of burn-out. I did too many things in too many countries. My doctor said, 'Whoa! You need to stop!' So I cancelled everything and stopped singing entirely. For one week. I even stopped talking because my voice needed to rest. After that, I knew that I had to manage my schedule better and to have periods of rest."

By any measure, Lemieux's career trajectory has taken her far from the small community of Dobeau, in the Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, where she was born on June 26, 1975, and where her parents still live. The daughter of a lumberjack father and a stay-at-home mom, and with two brothers (one older, one younger), music was always a part of her home life. "My first contact with music was through singing," she says. "My mother was always singing--when she washed dishes, when she was cleaning the carpets. And my father and brothers, too. We sang a lot together. Songs of Nana Mouskouri and Tino Rossi. And each Saturday at seven, we sang the mass at church. So for me, singing was really, really natural."

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When she was 10, her father bought a Luciano Pavarotti recording of sacred songs. Besides seasonal hits like "O Holy Night," "Ave Maria" and "Panis Angelicus," there was also the Sanctus from Berlioz's Requiem. "It was my first classical coup de foudre," says Lemeiux. "I was so moved by it. I remember lying on the carpet listening to this music and imagining myself in heaven, in paradise."

Her imagination also clicked in when she saw her first opera, a performance of Tosca on TV Afterwards, she was making up songs, singing "Je suis Tosca!" and casting herself in the role of the diva's daughter. She went on to listen to a lot of classical music throughout her teen years, the vocal component including what she remembers as "a lot of coloratura and soprano stuff" and such names as Mado Robin, Birgit Nilsson, Gabriella Tucci and Anna Moffo. In high school, in addition to singing in the choir, Lemieux started to play flute and learned how to read a score. But at 17, she stopped making music for a year to concentrate on sciences. "It was when I stopped that I realized music was like breathing for me. I felt terrible, as if I wasn't living. It was then that I decided to finish my diploma in science and audition for the Conservatoire. I didn't want to see myself at 80 thinking that maybe it would have been good to sing opera. I did not want to have any regrets."

Up to this point, Lemieux had had no formal vocal training and in this respect could be counted a late starter. "I only started really singing when I was 19," she says. "My first teacher was Rosaire Simard at the Conservatoire de musique in Chicoutimi. As a teacher, he was a mystic and like a psychologist for me, and helped me a lot. He worked on technique a little bit, but he said it was not his strength. Instead, he wanted me to be really strong in my head and in my body. It was important for me because I had many, many complexes and many, many fears and anxieties. He helped me to conquer them and learn."

After Chicoutimi, Lemieux applied to the Conservatoire de musique in Montreal, where she was assigned to the studio of the renowned teacher, Marie Daveluy (also the teacher of soprano Karina Gauvin). "I remember when I arrived at the first class," says Lemieux. "Since I was assigned to her studio, she had never actually heard me sing. But after she heard me--and I will remember this all my life--she said: 'We are really happy to have you ... pause ... even though we did not choose you.' But when I got to know her, I found that she has such a big, big heart. She's amazing. Technically, she's very strong and sometimes she's very hard on you. But she's a great musician and a perfectionist. She gives all her heart to music. I'm so lucky to have had these two people in my life. They came at a good time."

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Apart from her two teachers, Lemieux has one particular role model who has had a profound impact upon her career. "The first time I heard Maureen Forrester was at the Conservatoire in Chicoutimi. I spent so many afternoons in the library listening to music and to many great singers. And when I was listening to Forrester's early recordings I recognized something in my voice that was close to hers--and to Christa Ludwig's. It's good to sing Handel and Vivaldi, but when I sing Mahler and things like the Brahms Alto Rhapsody, it's as if these composers knew me and I feel really free--as if the music were tailor-made. When I heard these two ladies singing, I could imagine myself singing these things, too. They were my role models."

Lemieux believes the reason we're touched or moved by one singer but not by another is more about musicality than it is about voice per se. "When something is musical, it goes to my soul. When I hear a singer and everything is perfect, but I don't feel a tingling in my skin, I don't react. It's nice, but it's not music.

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"But Maureen Forrester sang with her soul and her heart, and I think that people can hear that. If you don't have heart, all the work you do, the technique, fails. It's the same with violin or piano or cello. You can play with the most beautiful technique in the world, but if you don't have your heart in your hands, in your arms, in your throat, it's not interesting."

For her own part, Lemieux has won accolades for the heart in her own art, whether she is singing melodies of Duparc, Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde or Mistress Quickly in Verdi's Falstaff ("my candy role," as she puts it, "just fun, fun and fun!"). She now works with many of the great conductors in the business, from Charles Dutoit and Kent Nagano to Rene Jacobs and Kurt Masur. "I'm really lucky," she laughs. "My first Pelleas et Melisande was with Sir Bernard Haitink, and the next one will be with Sir Simon Rattle in Berlin next April." Closer to home, another conductor who made a strong impression on Lemieux was the late Richard Bradshaw." He was a conductor who loved singers and who always gave me wings when singing," she says. "I remember the evening when I sang songs by Schreker for CBC Radio, a beautiful evening of Schreker, Strauss and Schoenberg. Singing with conductors like that is thrilling because you have this amazing communication, this wonderful connection between singer, conductor and orchestra."

Although she has recorded for several other labels, Lemieux now enjoys the relatively rare privilege of an exclusive contract. Hers is with the French label, Naive, for which she has recorded several discs, including two award-winning recordings of Vivaldi operas, Griselda and Orlando Furioso, and a splendid recital disc, L'heure exquise. A new recording of Vivaldi's Stabat Mater, performed with one of her favorite colleagues, the countertenor Philippe Jaroussky, will be released early in 2008.

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The New Year is one of new beginnings for Lemieux in a couple of respects. There will be preparations for the Paris Padmavati, which takes her into new musical territory. "It's really rare that we can hear this music," she says. "It's a love story about an Indian princess. The music is really influenced by India with its exotic melismas. Besides," she adds with obvious pleasure, "the stage director [Sanjay Leela Bhansali] and costume designer are from Bollywood!"

More personally, the New Year will be the first together for Lemieux and the newest member of her family. Her first child, daughter Marion, was born last October 15, "the same day," Lemieux quickly points out, as if it's a good omen, "that soprano Karina Gauvin was born. For the moment, I'm trying to learn to be a good mother, to help my baby grow fast and healthy." Pregnancy and childbirth, obviously, have some effect on a singer's life and career, and after the birth Lemieux took a few weeks off, before slowly getting back to work with her teacher. "We'll see how the voice is," she said just as she was starting to think about singing again. "When I was pregnant, somehow the low voice was easier, the high notes were easier and the color of my voice was rounder. So we'll see what happens now without my baby. But you know, it's also important for me sometimes to stop singing, because I need to 'miss' singing. When you miss singing and you go back to work, you are just so happy. The first concert after a vacation, I'm like a child. I miss the stage."