FrenchKate

Sept 29: Brighton--day 2: The Brighton Pavilion & Brighton Museum

We lazed around in the morning, chatting of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings, Finally, we got ourselves organized and walked the several miles of charmingly English streets of Brighton to the North Laines (where we had fish and chips for lunch.)

Then we toured the Royal Pavilion--that astonishing and unique building--and visited the Brighton Museum.

The museum--housed in the bones of the old Royal Stables--contains several satisfying collections: a furniture collection with some beautiful piece, a small set of Egyptian artifacts (collected by a Brighton native who became one of the 19th century's foremost Egyptologists,) a collection associated with Brighton's history--including a beautiful boat model--and the quirky Willet collection of pottery.

We also took in a small exhibit of Jane Austen's connections to Brighton and the regency (slight and assumed0 but the artifacts were engaging.

We walked home, too--a total of 10,000 steps--after a cup of tea at a local coffee shop.

Sept 25: What to see and do in the Fontainebleau area

We don't have enough time in the Fontainebleau area--just four nights. I am tempted to cancel our trip to Provins to spend two more days in the area. Of course, there is the palace itself (which the New York Times described as, "a unique amalgam of Italian exuberance and artistic genius joined to French subtlety and classical restraint. The rooms that date from the 16th century are among the most breathtaking in France, but their richness can be overwhelming. Take your time, and look carefully:")

In addition, Fontainebleau has gardens by Le Notre who also designed the gardens at Versailles, Vaux le Vicomte and Chantilly. A helpful guidebook suggests a 3hour tour of the gardens. Yes, this is shaping up to be a château and garden tour.

In addition to the château ad its gardens, the palace of Fontainebleau is surrounded by 110 square miles of mixed deciduous forest--oak, scots pine, and European beech--laced with hiking trails and boulders. 

 

One trail, les trois pignons, passes the house of a hermit who lived in Fontaintebleau for 40 years and left behind when he died in 1999 a shelter illuminated by glass bottles. So that might be an interesting walk to take.

A famous art pre-impressionist school--the Barbizon school--was named for the village of Barbizon in the forêt de Fontainebleau where a number of artists who loved painting en plein air--Millet, Corot, Rousseau, and d'Aubigny--had studios. I imagine that Barbizon will be a trouist trap (like Giverny), but I still want to go there.

 

Oct 12: Life and Nothing But...

We saw Bertrand Tavernier's film, "Life and Nothing But"--or "La Vie et Rien d'Autre"--years ago, but it made so much more sense after visiting Verdun.

In Verdun in November, 1920, Major delaPlane seeks to identify as many of the 350,000 men missing in action as he can. Multiple subplots communicate quiet moments in the slow rebuilding of French society following the destruction.

A sculptor cackles with glee at the number of war memorials he is commissioned to make--35,000 French cities requesting war memorials and only 300 sculptors.

Grieving families search for their missing loved ones. A wealthy haute bourgeoise seeks her missing husband and a school teacher searches for her fiancé.

An officer, helped by a squad of Vietnamese soldiers, searches for the bodies of nine unidentified French soldiers--no Germans, Brits or Americans!--for the 1920 ceremony at Verdun at which the Unknown Soldier was selected. We see that ceremony near the end of the film.

A delegation comes to Major Delaplane requesting a change to the borders of their town. It is an embarrassment to the town that all seventeen enfants of their village survived and, if the borders were expanded just a little, they could at least claim three dead.

A red-cross train is found in a tunnel buried by Germans mines. The tunnel is badly shored up because a wood merchant sold the materials to a higher bidder.

A make-shift hotel/cafe/church is set up in an unused factory. A restaurant/cafe is set up in a make-shift wooden barn. A farmer discovers an unexploded bomb while plowing a field.

The details make this a marvelous film.

Friday, Feb 6: Early films

This footage by Thomas Edison shows the exciting finish of the 1899 America's Cup race between the Columbia (the yacht entered by the New York Yacht club) and the Shamrock (entered by Sir Thomas Lipton, if we cared.) This was the race during which Hope Goddard Iselin defied feminine decorum and served as crew, to the horror of the Daughters of the American Revolution. 

October 25: St Crispin's Day, 499 years and counting

When I was young and impressionable, I saw George Grizzard play Henry V at the Guthrie, a performance which remains one of my powerful theatre experiences. Every year since, I have observed the feast day of St Crispian, doing my small part to ensure that--as promised by Shakespeare's Henry V  in his inspiring speech before the battle of Agincourt--"Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by from this day to the ending of the world but we in it shall be remembered, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers..."

Now you can remember Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester on this 499th anniversary of the battle of Agincourt on St Crispian's Day, 1415. Yesterday I wrote about "how to be French." Here is Lawrence Olivier showing us how to be English in 1944:

Oct 30: Viva la France!

Neverted makes a good suggestion. Here we have the best ever proof of the value of a proper musical education among the citoyens. (I tried to find a clip that didn't have advertising, but Google may not let that happen.)

La Marseillaise, composed in 1792, was adopted in 1795 as the national anthem of the first Republic. It was suppressd by Napoleon I and outright banned under the various monarchies. But you just can't keep a good song of revolution down. The Commune brought it back in 1871, and it was finally and permanently established as the French national anthem in 1879.

Oct 29: What does it mean to be French?

So how did the French go about challenging the manly Prussian culture that had beaten them so badly? How did they attack the scourge of cultural decadence and effeminacy that had crippled them? One way was through teaching music--French music, of course--to children.

The French authorities were convinced by a musician's observation that, since Luther, Prussians had valued music for its civilizing usefulness, its "ability to forge a sense of collectivity by way of choral singing" (Annebret Frauser again.) In particular, the melody and rhythm involved in choral singing were believed to intensify patriotic feeling. Thus choral singing  came to be seen as a key to developing healthy musical tastes in healthy French citzens (where healthy was understood as synonymous with "masculine,") and public education began to emphasize choral music. Musicians cranked out patriotic marches for children and musicologists made traditional French folk tunes available. French folk music traditions were important, in part, to allay skepticism about a French music tradition.

Here is a video of a modern group of infants being indoctrinated into French Culture as they sing Les Petits Poissons (I am, of course, being facetious.)

You are there: opera at the theatre in Orange

So this would be fun. I mentioned in yesterday's post that the theatre in Orange hosts an annual opera festival, les Chorégies d'Orange, a festival which, dating from 1869, has become the oldest musical festival in France. The setting attracts worldclass singers, musicians and productions. In the summer of 2011, Les Chorégies performances started on June 17 with Racine's La Andromaque, included Aida on July 9 and finished with Rigoletto on August 2. We, alas, knowing nothing of Les Chorégies, were in Orange on June 11.

These three videos give a taste of what such performances would be like. First, a view of La Traviata taken from a fan in the audience:

Then an afternoon rehearsal of Carmen. It was hard to find videos that communicate the scale of the theatre wall, and this daylight rehearsal gives onea sense of the stage:

Finally, Natalie Dessay performing "Olympia's song" from les contes de Hoffmann. The thing to note here is the wind blowing.I put this up because I adore Natalie Dessay AND les contes de Hoffmann.