Within a month the orchestra had made its first tour, giving concerts in four Quebec towns as far away as Val d’Or and Rouyn, at the request of the Quebec government. In February it gave its first out-of-town concert in Ontario, playing in Deep River, as well as making its first foray into the United States, playing at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. At the same time, the orchestra signed its first recording contract—a three-year deal with RCA (Canada) for distribution by the record company in the United States, and elsewhere around the world by the CBC’s International Service.
Back in Ottawa, the players attended to their other duties, visiting schools throughout the region with weekly demonstrations, playing in the pit for two opera performances by the visiting Canadian Opera Company, and presenting the first of a series of six chamber recitals. With this musical introduction, the NAC embarked on a golden time in its artistic life. Everyone believed that this new orchestral venture was different from any other enterprise in Canadian arts. The youthful musicians—their average age was twenty-six—were quickly dubbed the “Ottawa Youth Orchestra.”2 They needed their energy as they worked furiously from week to week to learn new repertoire. Despite the earlier machinations from Toronto and Montreal to prevent the creation of the new ensemble, critics in the Montreal and Toronto papers now applauded “Ottawa’s arrival on the orchestral map” and “yet another orchestra of distinction in Canada.”3 Only when orchestra manger Ken Murphy turned up with Evelyn Greenberg at an early meeting of the fledgling Canadian Orchestra Association and offered the other delegates a copy of the NACO’s first recording were they brought face to face with how much privilege this orchestra enjoyed compared to others in the country. There was some envy that the new band had progressed so far, so fast, when other long-established orchestras had to work so much harder for similar success.
Dance played its part in that first season with appearances by all three established Canadian companies: the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, and the National Ballet of Canada. The Toronto company presented the first of what would become an annual tradition—a Christmas presentation of The Nutcracker. In modern dance, the Groupe de la Place Royale and the Toronto Dance Theatre both appeared, and dance performances generally attracted a respectably sized audience. The Canadian Opera Company presented two operas, Rigoletto and Die Fledermaus, and announced itself so pleased with the magnificent new Opera hall and the new NAC orchestra in the pit that it could not wait to come back again. Houses running at 90 percent capacity confirmed Ottawa’s keen interest in opera as well.
But could the city maintain this level of audience support? In addition to all the in-house programming by the National Arts Centre, the old ties with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra remained. During the first summer festival, this orchestra had given five popular concerts in the new facility, and, in the first regular season, it was brought back for six more concerts. The local impresarios who had kept the classical music scene alive in Ottawa were still trying to do business. Tremblay Concerts, which had been a mainstay on the Ottawa scene, brought the Santa Cecilia, Moscow, and Cleveland orchestras to the Opera hall as well as the Toronto Symphony. The Concert Society of Ottawa brought its own music series, which had historically appeared in the auditoria of local high schools, to the new Theatre. This embarrassment of riches proved problematic for both the schedules and the pocket-books of Ottawa music lovers. The city, used to eight or nine orchestral concerts annually, was suddenly faced with thirty-five such events.
At the November 1969 meeting, the board resolved that a Program Committee would henceforth review all requests for rentals of the halls by local impresarios in all areas, in the interests of providing “a balanced artistic program” to the public.4 The idea was to prevent “the clashes and crushes” which had occurred with competing events during the opening season, but the effect was to lead to the demise of the local impresarios who had sustained the city for so long. The NAC was taking a practical approach to the control of programming in its halls to ensure its own well-being as a priority. The policy applied to all programming areas from music to variety, and it would create tensions between local interests and those of the NAC that continued through the years.
On the English theatre side, things proceeded smoothly, with the Stratford Company presenting its well-travelled productions of Hamlet and The Alchemist, and the rest of the season filled out by other visiting companies, including the Shaw Festival, which brought a well-reviewed production of The Guardsman. Stratford’s participation, although well compensated, was provided reluctantly, as its management continued to resist becoming the NAC’s resident company on any but its own terms. The relationship between the two theatres would not endure. As Haber remarked later, “In my time we never got around to producing theatre at the NAC, except offstage.”5 The real drama in this first season, however, was in the resident French company. Le Théâtre Capricorne had started its regular season with a production of Friedrich Durrenmatt’s La Visite de la Vieille Dame, which opened to critical success on September 29 in the Theatre. But from the outset the performers, mostly actors imported from Montreal, had clashed with artistic director Jean-Guy Sabourin and, by mid-October, they were in open rebellion, refusing to work further with him. It was clear that these artists, schooled in the Montreal theatres of Le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde and Le Rideau Vert, were not interested in the sociological theories of the theatrical art-form which Sabourin and his associate theatre administrator, Benoit de Margerie, were trying to impose on their work, and they had little respect for Sabourin’s methods.
The NAC was already being criticized by the Canada Council for the large size of its French theatre budget. Southam countered that he needed professionals, and that meant bringing actors from Montreal. Besides, he said, Le Théâtre Capricorne was “the only French-speaking professional theatre company outside Quebec.”6 Southam met individually with the French company members and thought he had worked out a compromise, but the strife continued. Pelletier was made informally aware of the problems through contacts in the Quebec theatre community. In an effort to solve the difficulties and save the French theatre season, the board authorized the vice-chair, actor Paul Hébert, to set up a special committee of French-speaking trustees—Hébert, Madeleine Gobeil, and Andrée Paradis—to work out a plan. While the actors fundamentally did not agree with Sabourin’s approach, the fact that most of them had been shipped in from Montreal aggravated matters. Ottawa was still a social desert at this time with virtually no good restaurants and no place to go at night after performances. This lack of Québécois conviviality, along with Sabourin’s requirement that the performers do community work as well as the mainstage plays, had ensured revolt among his players.
By the February 1970 meetings, the board felt compelled to terminate Sabourin as the artistic director.7 Sabourin gave the trustees a spirited defence of his ideas and even appealed directly to Minister Pelletier to intervene on his behalf, but his tenure at the Arts Centre was effectively over. By May, the board instructed Southam to negotiate a settlement with him. The original idea of a permanent French theatre company was temporarily cancelled, with what was left of Le Théâtre Capricorne to play an impresario role in the coming season.
It was back to the drawing board on how best to present French theatre. Southam again consulted Jean Gascon and other leading figures in French theatre, including the renowned French director Jean-Louis Barrault, who was booked to appear at the Arts Centre. Along with the criticism over the budget for French theatre, Southam also had to contend with controversy over a tour by Les Jeunes Comédiens, a group of young players associated with the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, which was travelling the country under the auspices of the National Arts Centre. It was a rocky start to the NAC’s efforts.