Montreal City Guide - Culture

Montreal is well represented in all the traditional manifestations of high culture (symphony, opera and ballet) but truly stands out in experimental theatre and contemporary dance. One of its most notable exports is the internationally acclaimed Cirque du Soleil (tel: (514) 722 2324 or 1 800 678 2119; website: www.cirquedusoleil.com), which still occasionally performs in Montreal. Innovation in the arts is not all that new in the city - in the first half of the 20th century, it was one of the hottest places for jazz; Oscar Peterson was born here.

Place des Arts (tel: (514) 842 2112 or 1 866 842 2112; website: www.pdarts.com), a complex of performance halls surrounding a large plaza and linked by an underground concourse, makes up the city's cultural heart and is home to all of Montreal's major performing arts companies. Its plaza, along with the surrounding streets, is the epicentre of the big summer festivals, when tens of thousands of people throng the area for the free outdoor shows and other events.

There are events listings in the free alternative weeklies, The Mirror (website: www.montrealmirror.com) and Hour (website: www.hour.ca), as well as Montreal's daily English-language newspaper, The Gazette (website: www.montrealgazette.com). Tickets for most cultural events can be purchased from Admission outlets (tel: (514) 790 1245 or 1 800 361 4595; website: www.admission.com) for a fee, as well as from the venue itself.

Music: The Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (tel: (514) 842 9951; website: www.osm.ca) is one of the top performance groups in North America. They can be seen at Place des Arts (see above) and offer summer concerts at the Basilique Notre-Dame. L'Opéra de Montréal (tel: (514) 985 2258; website: www.operademontreal.com) is the city's leading opera company. They, too, perform at Place des Arts, as do the chamber groups I Musici de Montréal (tel: (514) 982 6038; website: www.imusici.com) and those organised by the Pro Musica society (tel: (514) 845 0532; website: www.promusica.qc.ca).

Theatre: Theatre is dominated by French-language productions, but there are occasional runs of large Broadway shows. The city's mainstay English-language company is the Centaur Theatre, 453 rue St-François-Xavier (tel: (514) 288 3161; website: www.centaurtheatre.com), with everything from Canadian drama to Broadway hits. Unique to the city are the Yiddish Theatre productions at the Saidye Bronfman Centre, 5170 chemin de la Côte-Ste-Catherine (tel: (514) 739 2301; website: www.saidyebronfman.org). This venue also stages a number of English-language plays a year. Light-hearted summer theatre is staged in the Eastern Townships at The Piggery Theatre, in North Hatley (tel: (819) 842 2431; website: www.piggery.com), and Théâtre Lac Brome, in Knowlton (tel: (450) 242 2270; website: www.theatrelacbrome.ca). The most established of the French-language theatres are the Théâtre du Rideau Vert, 4664 rue St-Denis (tel: (514) 844 1793; website: www.rideauvert.qc.ca), Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, 84 rue Ste-Catherine West (tel: (514) 866 8668; website: www.tnm.qc.ca), and Théâtre Jean-Duceppe, Place des Arts (tel: (514) 842 2112; website: www.duceppe.com).

Dance: The city's chief ballet company is Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal (tel: (514) 849 8681 or 842 2112 (box office); website: www.grandsballets.qc.ca), who perform at Place des Arts. The Festival des Arts de St-Sauveur (tel: (450) 227 0427; website: www.artssaintsauveur.com) showcases international ballet companies in the Laurentians in July and August.

Film: There are plenty of English-language screens in the city, mostly downtown. The largest and most modern are the central Paramount Montreal, 977 rue Ste-Catherine West (tel: (514) 842 7094; website: www.famousplayers.com), and the 22-screen AMC Forum, 2313 rue Ste-Catherine West (tel: (514) 904 1250; website: www.amctheatres.com). Ex-Centris, 3536 boulevard St-Laurent (tel: (514) 847 2206; website: www.ex-centris.com), is a high-tech cinema for independent film and avant-garde new media productions.

Montreal is one of Canada's largest film production centres and a number of Hollywood films have been shot here, including Snake Eyes (1998), More Tales of the City (1998) and Battlefield Earth (2000). A much better picture of the city can be had from such films as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974), Jésus de Montréal (1989) and the charming Léolo (1992), though Old Montreal does provide a backdrop in The Score (2001). The Terminal (2003), starring Tom Hanks, was filmed in Montreal's Mirabel Airport. More recently, the city's streets were used to film Sin City (2005), directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez. The World Film Festival (website: www.ffm-montreal.org) is only one of many such festivals, including celebrations of cultures from Jewish to First Nations (website: www.espaces.qc.ca) and the gay and lesbian image+nation (website: www.image-nation.org).

Literary Notes: Montreal has a rich literary history in both French and English poetry, drama and fiction. A number of authors have captured the day-to-day realities of life in the city, including David Fennario, whose play Balconville (1979) explores the interaction between French and English in the working-class neighbourhood of Pointe St-Charles. Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute (1947) chronicles a family's lives in nearby St-Henri. The Plateau Mont-Royal is the setting for the novelist and playwright Michel Tremblay's The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant (1978) and also for the earlier works of Mordecai Richler: The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959) and St Urbain's Horseman (1971). The French-English divide was captured by Hugh MacLennan in Two Solitudes (1945), and the former McGill professor's The Watch That Ends the Night (1959) is a wonderfully poignant novel set in Montreal. Although better known for his music, Leonard Cohen chronicles a young man's coming of age in Montreal in his first novel, The Favourite Game (1963). Kathy Reichs' chilling tales of a forensic anthropologist in Montreal began with Déjà Dead in 1997. Yann Martel, who won the 2002 Booker Prize for Life of Pi, lives in Montreal. It should be added that Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow was born in the city.