Micheline Legendre

Micheline Legendre (18 February 19235 January 2010) was a Canadian puppeteer. She performed on television and on stage with her troupe, Les marionnettes de Montréal. Her oeuvre spanned 1,170 puppets created and more than 16,000 performances for 2.5 million audience members. Legendre was a violinist by training and her marionnette troupe played with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, for Radio-Canada and the National Film Board of Canada, among others. She was also an art historian at the Université de Montréal.

Early life Micheline Legendre was born in Outremont, Quebec, on 18 February 1923, to Jean-Charles Legendre and Yvonne Lafontaine. as well as with Sue Hastings in New York. Her study with Chesnais and his Comédiens en bois (Wooden actors) was part of a European tour of apprenticeships she undertook beginning in late 1951; she said later of the puppet master's training in technique, "I owe him everything." and Stravinsky's Petrushka in 1958. In 1969 she introduced the first course in puppetry at the Université de Montréal, training students that went on to work for marionnettes troupes L'Illusion and the Théâtre de l'Oeil. It ran for a week and brought eight companies to perform, including Chesnais's Wooden Actors, Ina Von Macaho's marionnettes, Albert Roser, the Czech Marion Theater from Spejbl and Hurvink, as well as Austrian and Polish companies. In total, she created more than 1,170 puppets and gave more than 16,000 performances,

Public life In 1960, Legendre visited China as part of a Canadian delegation that included Pierre Trudeau (later prime minister) and Jacques Hébert. With Trudeau, she also cofounded the journal Cité libre. UNIMA, the International Puppetry Union, made her an honorary member at its congress in Germany in 2000.

Personal life Legendre died in her home in Outremont, Quebec, on 5 January 2010.

Publications