| Christina |
Oct 25th, 2000 09:13 AM |
Caro, I believe you got this information from me on another post, in which I gave you the exact web site of the club which contains all of that information on it (imonaire.free.fr). What problem did you have with it? At least the address should be clear, it is at the top of the homepage (18 cite bergere). If you gave up because of the French (I think there is no English page), I will try to answer these questions from the web site. First, look at the left hand bar--you will see "accueil" which means "welcome" and is general info; you will also see "le plan" which means "map" and you should click on that and print out the map as I told you this street is not easy to find (c'est ici means "it's here" and refers to the club). The "programmes" button is the programs, of course, and you should at least see performers listed by date of the month that you want to go. Okay, chanson is the traditional French singing many people think of which is not easy to find any more--like what Edith Piaf, Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, Yves Montand, etc sang (I suppose Maurice Chevalier and Charles Trenet if you go back further, but you probably aren't familiar with them). This is an authentic Parisian club with traditional chanson and a lot of younger chanson singers sing there, but it is traditional in format and style; there will be few tourists or English-speakers there. Okay, if you want to go, the Accuel page says that shows Tu-Sat nights start at 10 pm; there is no cover charge, but this page says the performers are playing for you to donate what you wish, so after a performer sings, they will pass the "chapeau" (hat) and you should put in some money for the performer. In addition to the trad. signing at 10 pm, there are special shows on Sunday nights at 6 pm: on the 1st Sun of the month, there is dancing to trad French music (accordion, piano, etc); the 3rd Sun of the month has a silent film with piano accompaniment; and the 2nd & 4th Sun of the month are sort of open-mike, amateur night. When looking at the program, "chanson" after a person's name means a singer, "humour" and "poesie" means comedy (suggest you skip that, you won't get it unless you know very fluent French) and poetry, of course. I'm not familiar with the performance term "chanson contees" but it literally means "story songs" so I can visualize what that might be, more spoken, long things; I would stick to the "chanson" performances. Oh, you can also eat there with the performance, they want reservations for that (01-45-23-33-33), and say something about being sure to get there early if you want to eat as service is completely interrupted by the performance (I think they mean servers will not be coming around during the performance). I hope this answers your questions. There are some other chanson clubs that advertise and have more tourists (ie, Au Lapin Agile on Montmartre, even tour groups go there), but this will be a more authentically French experience.
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