Thanks to a bequest from Eva Kleinitz – the late director of the Opéra du Rhin National, who died in the clinic in May 2019 – and her parents Ulla and Wolfram Kleinitz, the project was inaugurated on 14 September 2021 with an exceptional concert given by the Talens Lyriques in the Chapelle de la Toussaint, on the clinic grounds, in front of around fifty patients, their families and the clinic’s teams and staff.
For Xavier Mattelaer, the doctor in charge of the clinic’s palliative care service, “our work in palliative care is not limited solely to controlling physical symptoms. Our aim is to provide the most comprehensive care possible for each patient we care for, taking into account their psychological, social and spiritual dimensions (…) Let’s not leave those affected by illness to face it alone. Let us dare to share with them the bond that makes them both more alive and more human.
Aware of the importance of reaching out to all audiences, Les Talens Lyriques has been performing regularly in this healthcare establishment since September 2021. Following the ensemble’s exceptional inaugural concert in the Chapelle de la Toussaint, Murielle Pfister, a musician from Les Talens Lyriques, has subsequently performed once a month in the various palliative care departments. Playing her violin in patients’ rooms and communal areas, she performed a wide variety of repertoires ranging from baroque to pop, at the request of patients, their families and nursing staff.
On the strength of the experience we have gained from our many performances with different staff, venues and formats, and fully convinced of the relevance of a musical project for patients and carers, we wish to develop and intensify our presence at the Clinique de la Toussaint in Strasbourg. Les Talens Lyriques want to use their art and their artists to create social links with and between people who are excluded from society, and to fight against their exclusion because of their health situation.
Les Talens Lyriques would therefore like to meet the patients of the Clinique de la Toussaint and offer them a chance to share the pleasure, emotion and comfort that music brings.
The aim of the project is initially to develop musical interventions by Talens Lyriques artists in the various areas of the Clinique de la Toussaint. Workshops, concerts, in rooms or communal areas, meetings or open rehearsals are events that we would like to regularise over the year. In a second phase, this project could be duplicated in other health establishments in the Strasbourg or Paris region, keen to bring music into the daily lives of patients.
We hope that this project will be able to support patients, their families and carers in their day-to-day lives in hospital in a different way, to combat their exclusion because of their health situation and to provide them with moral and spiritual comfort.
Our programme “If music be the food of the soul” was featured on France Musique. Watch the programme below, produced by Mathilde Cariou in December 2023.
“It was really deep, it takes your soul. It changes a man.”
Serge, patient at Clinique de la Toussaint
“It was a gift that these two women gave us.”
Elisabeth, patient at Clinique de la Toussaint
Les Talens Lyriques is running this partnership with the Clinique de la Toussaint, in tribute to Eva Kleinitz, the late director of the Opéra National du Rhin.
We need your help to ensure that this partnership continues and develops, and that music can continue to alleviate suffering.
