November in Paris: Nikki's trip report
Nov 24th, 2008, 08:13 AM
#21
Original Poster
Wednesday is a day at home. It is the halfway point of the trip. After much conviviality for the past four days, I will be alone for the next seven. There is nothing on my schedule today, and I spend the day sleeping, reading, writing. I walk to the bakery, the charcuterie. No restaurant meals today.
The apartment manager calls to see how things are going. At that exact moment the computer stops functioning. The manager comes to see if he can figure out the problem and he does; it is a faulty connection, solved by removing a splitter from the plug. While he is there, we hear the children upstairs, and he asks if the noise bothers me. Not at all. Nor does the piano playing. Every apartment I have rented in Paris has had some music seeping in from neighbors practicing. This makes me feel very much at home.
Later, from the bedroom, I hear a baby crying and the sounds of someone practicing the violin. Coincidence or cause and effect? On the whole, however, the apartment is very quiet and there is virtually no street noise.
I am really enjoying the Batignolles neighborhood. I see parents walking their children to and from school each day. The shops, cafés and restaurants within a few blocks of the apartment are very convenient and make for a cheerful environment. It is a bit more work to get around the city than from other, more central areas, but this has given me the opportunity to spend time going through areas I have neglected on previous trips.
The buses I take almost everywhere pass through the busy area around the grands magasins, which are already decked out in holiday lights—Printemps in glittering silver, Galeries Lafayette resplendent in gold. I reflect many times on the construction of the buses, which seem designed to accommodate the fewest possible number of seated passengers.
Dinner chez moi consists of camembert, cold chicken, a salade mixte from the charcuterie with cucumbers, olives and feta, and an apricot tart. This is not suffering.
Thursday I head back to the Collège de France for a course on ancient Roman civilization entitled “La religion, la cité, l’individu.” I have time before the course begins so I browse in a record store and score a used CD of the new Sanseverino release, and a few other used and new CDs at a good price.
The lecture addresses the role of the cité in Roman civilization and distinguishes between the different types of urban areas and the different roles of people living within them. Very interesting, although once again I wonder whether the points I am taking away from it are strictly the ones being made by the professor.
After the class, I take the bus to the Bastille, where there is a large antique and brocante show along both sides of the Bassin de l’Arsenale. I enter into a covered area with fancy furniture and jewelry but soon move to the outdoor area where there are many stands selling bird cages, binnacles, bustiers and boxing gloves. I have enough of this stuff: wooden coffee grinders, enamelware chocolate pots, old copper. I have lost the acquisitive urge, at least temporarily. I look at old newspapers and sheet music. Prices seem high. I am chastised for using my camera, which takes away a great deal of the appeal of the market, and I leave without purchasing anything.
Chocolate at the Opera Café is 3.80. I think of it as rent. I spend some time writing in my journal and watching the passing scene. Then I take the bus toward Faidherbe Chaligny and walk down the rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine. I hear music coming from a café, La Liberté, and I sit at an open table outside where I can watch the two women creating the music: a singer and a cellist who plays alternately sitting and standing. Their music is full of good spirit and energy and I stay a while.
Then I walk toward the restaurant I have chosen for dinner: Au Vieux Chêne, 7 rue du Dahomey. It is 8:00, and that is when the restaurant is supposed to open, but the staff are all sitting at a long table having their supper when I come inside. I am invited to have a seat while they finish.
I’m here for the grouse. I have been told by one of the people at the Fodor’s get-together that they had grouse here, and I am determined to try it after going to Scotland last summer and seeing the land that is managed for grouse hunting. I have also been watching the Scottish television series “Monarch of the Glen,” in which one episode is devoted to getting freshly hunted grouse onto tables in a London restaurant. I assume this restaurant in Paris came by their grouse with less drama.
I start with a terrine of joue de boeuf (beef cheeks) with foie gras for 10 euros and then have the grouse cooked two ways: confit of thigh and roasted breast with quince and celery for 24 euros. Terrific cooking. This comfortable, small restaurant is a place to which I would happily return. There is a lively bilingual birthday celebration going on at one table. At another a woman is seated by herself and ends up in a heated discussion with the waiter and leaves. It is possible she is drunk.
The apartment manager calls to see how things are going. At that exact moment the computer stops functioning. The manager comes to see if he can figure out the problem and he does; it is a faulty connection, solved by removing a splitter from the plug. While he is there, we hear the children upstairs, and he asks if the noise bothers me. Not at all. Nor does the piano playing. Every apartment I have rented in Paris has had some music seeping in from neighbors practicing. This makes me feel very much at home.
Later, from the bedroom, I hear a baby crying and the sounds of someone practicing the violin. Coincidence or cause and effect? On the whole, however, the apartment is very quiet and there is virtually no street noise.
I am really enjoying the Batignolles neighborhood. I see parents walking their children to and from school each day. The shops, cafés and restaurants within a few blocks of the apartment are very convenient and make for a cheerful environment. It is a bit more work to get around the city than from other, more central areas, but this has given me the opportunity to spend time going through areas I have neglected on previous trips.
The buses I take almost everywhere pass through the busy area around the grands magasins, which are already decked out in holiday lights—Printemps in glittering silver, Galeries Lafayette resplendent in gold. I reflect many times on the construction of the buses, which seem designed to accommodate the fewest possible number of seated passengers.
Dinner chez moi consists of camembert, cold chicken, a salade mixte from the charcuterie with cucumbers, olives and feta, and an apricot tart. This is not suffering.
Thursday I head back to the Collège de France for a course on ancient Roman civilization entitled “La religion, la cité, l’individu.” I have time before the course begins so I browse in a record store and score a used CD of the new Sanseverino release, and a few other used and new CDs at a good price.
The lecture addresses the role of the cité in Roman civilization and distinguishes between the different types of urban areas and the different roles of people living within them. Very interesting, although once again I wonder whether the points I am taking away from it are strictly the ones being made by the professor.
After the class, I take the bus to the Bastille, where there is a large antique and brocante show along both sides of the Bassin de l’Arsenale. I enter into a covered area with fancy furniture and jewelry but soon move to the outdoor area where there are many stands selling bird cages, binnacles, bustiers and boxing gloves. I have enough of this stuff: wooden coffee grinders, enamelware chocolate pots, old copper. I have lost the acquisitive urge, at least temporarily. I look at old newspapers and sheet music. Prices seem high. I am chastised for using my camera, which takes away a great deal of the appeal of the market, and I leave without purchasing anything.
Chocolate at the Opera Café is 3.80. I think of it as rent. I spend some time writing in my journal and watching the passing scene. Then I take the bus toward Faidherbe Chaligny and walk down the rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine. I hear music coming from a café, La Liberté, and I sit at an open table outside where I can watch the two women creating the music: a singer and a cellist who plays alternately sitting and standing. Their music is full of good spirit and energy and I stay a while.
Then I walk toward the restaurant I have chosen for dinner: Au Vieux Chêne, 7 rue du Dahomey. It is 8:00, and that is when the restaurant is supposed to open, but the staff are all sitting at a long table having their supper when I come inside. I am invited to have a seat while they finish.
I’m here for the grouse. I have been told by one of the people at the Fodor’s get-together that they had grouse here, and I am determined to try it after going to Scotland last summer and seeing the land that is managed for grouse hunting. I have also been watching the Scottish television series “Monarch of the Glen,” in which one episode is devoted to getting freshly hunted grouse onto tables in a London restaurant. I assume this restaurant in Paris came by their grouse with less drama.
I start with a terrine of joue de boeuf (beef cheeks) with foie gras for 10 euros and then have the grouse cooked two ways: confit of thigh and roasted breast with quince and celery for 24 euros. Terrific cooking. This comfortable, small restaurant is a place to which I would happily return. There is a lively bilingual birthday celebration going on at one table. At another a woman is seated by herself and ends up in a heated discussion with the waiter and leaves. It is possible she is drunk.
Nov 24th, 2008, 08:34 AM
#22
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Nikki wrote (inter some very interesting alia): " I wonder whether the points I am taking away from it are strictly the ones being made by the professor."
Acute observation. Your mind is your own territory, where you reign supreme.
Acute observation. Your mind is your own territory, where you reign supreme.
Nov 24th, 2008, 06:22 PM
#24
Original Poster
On Friday I go again to the Collège de France for the class in medieval art. This session focuses on the role of the artist. Evidently the creators of medieval images were viewed more as technicians, as craftsmen, than as artists. We look at several pictures that contain images of artists within them and look at the connections made between artists, scribes, and the people who commissioned their work.
After an hour and a half, the mind wanders. Is it the effort of concentrating on the French, on the medieval art, or is it lunch? The large lecture hall is unavailable today, so the class is being held in a smaller one. It is standing room only. The overflow is in another room with speakers broadcasting the class. At the end of the class, the professor reminds the group that he won’t be there next week. The next class will be in quinze jours. This appears to be a quaint French way of saying two weeks. Clearly it won’t be in fifteen actual days, since that would put it on a Saturday, when the school is closed.
I take the bus toward the Bastille, with the intention of having lunch at l’Ecume, a restaurant I had enjoyed when I stayed in that neighborhood in March. I find however that the restaurant is gone. I remember hearing good things about the one across the street, the Baz Art Café, 36 boulevard Henri IV (www.bazartcafe.com), so I walk in and give it a try. This could be the best meal of the trip. For 15 euros, I get a ragout of escargot in a wonderful rich sauce with a terrific pastry crust, then a stuffed filet of sabre (fish) with mussels in a saffron cream.
Friday evening I have a ticket to a concert at the Opéra Bastille Amphithéatre of music by Karlheinz Stockhausen. This concert is part of the Festival d’Automne, an interesting schedule of music, theater, cinema, and dance events all over Paris. The amphithéatre is a smaller hall underneath the main opera hall, with unreserved seating on benches. I get a seat in the front row. I like the leg room, but I also like the intimacy of the performance without audience members between me and the ensemble.
The first piece is entirely on tape, including voices and electronic sounds. I wonder why we are all listening in the dark. There is polite applause when it ends, partly because it is hard to tell exactly when it does end. The second piece is performed, this is more like it. A trio of clarinet, viola and bassoon play standing at music stands and periodically each player shifts to the next stand. Occasionally other instruments put in appearances around the hall. The piece seems to be about the interaction among the musicians.
The third and last piece, after the intermission, is very entertaining. Each of several instrumentalists plays (and acts!) a substantial solo. The trombonist is playing on his back. Doesn’t this collapse his diaphragm, I wonder? The flutist makes sounds I could never replicate, at least not intentionally. All the soloists play fantastically under very challenging conditions.
The electronic sounds which accompany the live musicians seem to me as though they would be very distracting. I wonder whether the musicians feel they are playing with the accompaniment or against it. Some of the effects sound as though they could be coming from the adjacent métro station. Others sound like a huge swarm of mosquitoes.
The community symphony in which I play premiered a piece last year by a local composer in which there was a taped electronic accompaniment to the live music. The large setup of computers and speakers that the piece required blew a fuse in the middle school auditorium where we performed, and we ended up doing the piece without the electronic component. It felt distinctly like something was missing. I’m wondering whether this Stockhausen piece would feel the same way without the electronic elements or whether it would be a relief if the fuse blew in the Amphithéatre. All in all, however, this is a very enjoyable performance with great musicianship
After an hour and a half, the mind wanders. Is it the effort of concentrating on the French, on the medieval art, or is it lunch? The large lecture hall is unavailable today, so the class is being held in a smaller one. It is standing room only. The overflow is in another room with speakers broadcasting the class. At the end of the class, the professor reminds the group that he won’t be there next week. The next class will be in quinze jours. This appears to be a quaint French way of saying two weeks. Clearly it won’t be in fifteen actual days, since that would put it on a Saturday, when the school is closed.
I take the bus toward the Bastille, with the intention of having lunch at l’Ecume, a restaurant I had enjoyed when I stayed in that neighborhood in March. I find however that the restaurant is gone. I remember hearing good things about the one across the street, the Baz Art Café, 36 boulevard Henri IV (www.bazartcafe.com), so I walk in and give it a try. This could be the best meal of the trip. For 15 euros, I get a ragout of escargot in a wonderful rich sauce with a terrific pastry crust, then a stuffed filet of sabre (fish) with mussels in a saffron cream.
Friday evening I have a ticket to a concert at the Opéra Bastille Amphithéatre of music by Karlheinz Stockhausen. This concert is part of the Festival d’Automne, an interesting schedule of music, theater, cinema, and dance events all over Paris. The amphithéatre is a smaller hall underneath the main opera hall, with unreserved seating on benches. I get a seat in the front row. I like the leg room, but I also like the intimacy of the performance without audience members between me and the ensemble.
The first piece is entirely on tape, including voices and electronic sounds. I wonder why we are all listening in the dark. There is polite applause when it ends, partly because it is hard to tell exactly when it does end. The second piece is performed, this is more like it. A trio of clarinet, viola and bassoon play standing at music stands and periodically each player shifts to the next stand. Occasionally other instruments put in appearances around the hall. The piece seems to be about the interaction among the musicians.
The third and last piece, after the intermission, is very entertaining. Each of several instrumentalists plays (and acts!) a substantial solo. The trombonist is playing on his back. Doesn’t this collapse his diaphragm, I wonder? The flutist makes sounds I could never replicate, at least not intentionally. All the soloists play fantastically under very challenging conditions.
The electronic sounds which accompany the live musicians seem to me as though they would be very distracting. I wonder whether the musicians feel they are playing with the accompaniment or against it. Some of the effects sound as though they could be coming from the adjacent métro station. Others sound like a huge swarm of mosquitoes.
The community symphony in which I play premiered a piece last year by a local composer in which there was a taped electronic accompaniment to the live music. The large setup of computers and speakers that the piece required blew a fuse in the middle school auditorium where we performed, and we ended up doing the piece without the electronic component. It felt distinctly like something was missing. I’m wondering whether this Stockhausen piece would feel the same way without the electronic elements or whether it would be a relief if the fuse blew in the Amphithéatre. All in all, however, this is a very enjoyable performance with great musicianship
Nov 25th, 2008, 12:19 PM
#26
Original Poster
Saturday I go again to the marché biologique on the boulevard des Batignolles. This time I decide to get more ambitious and buy a duck breast filet to cook for myself. I also buy a rotisserie pintade (guinea hen) and some vegetable paella. I wait to buy some jars of organic Italian artichoke and olive paste at a stand where a woman has a small baby slung across her chest. An older woman standing beside me says to the young mother, “c’est du très bon produit” (very good produce). She isn’t talking about the olive paste.
I return with my goodies to the apartment. Since it is Saturday, the painter is not in the entryway of the apartment building. He has been there every day since Monday, and the small entryway is not finished yet.
This evening I have been invited to the rented apartment of Anselm and Margriet, two of the people from the Fodor’s get-together, for dinner. I bring an apricot tart, and they cook and serve all sorts of wonderful things from the markets. They have a wonderful apartment in the Marais, with a great dining room complete with fireplace. Just the thing for a dinner party. We talk about language, life, politics, and our imaginary friends. Delightful.
Sunday morning I walk toward the Square des Batignolles and arrive at the square just as people are getting out of church. There are many families with young children and the atmosphere is festive. There is a brocante market to stroll about and it is a much less claustrophobic environment than the big show at the Bastille had been. Less high end merchandise, and nobody seems to mind me taking photos.
The park is filled with parents and toddlers. They have all come, it seems, to visit the ducks. Interesting, colorful ducks they are too.
Lunch is olive bread, cheese and paté from the organic market.
I take the bus after lunch to the Théatre des Champs Elysées, where I have a ticket to see the opera Cosi Fan Tutte. Before the performance there is an introductory talk, and I have signed up to go hear it. We are directed to walk around to the rear of the building and go through the entrée des artistes. Down a long flight of stairs into a dance studio set up with chairs for the conférence.
There is the expected number of people wearing red coats and sweaters and scarves amid the sea of black. There seem to be fewer gray-haired women here, though, than in the crowd of a similar age at the Collège de France.
What I get out of the introductory talk: The couples in Cosi Fan Tutte switch partners when the two men come in disguise to attempt to seduce the two sisters to prove the women’s fidelity or lack thereof. The new couples are more alike in temperament than the original ones but at the end everyone returns to their partners, underlining the point that love is better when two people complement or complete each other than when they are too much alike. And when the two men boast of their attributes, a moustache is not just a moustache.
My seat for the performance is in the last seat in the first row. There is no orchestra pit. I am sitting in the trumpet section; I can literally read their music. This perspective feels familiar. The orchestra is young and good-looking. This is less familiar. The gorgeous woman on timpani is chatting up the two trumpet players. The equally gorgeous pianist is practicing. They are playing period instruments. Well, I don’t know about the timpani. The pianist has a long scarf that dangles past the keyboard. Better her than me. And my piano teacher would have made me take off that dangly watch. The bass player’s instrument has a fantastic carved scroll.
The guy sitting next to me has brought a libretto. There are surtitles in French, however, which makes a libretto unnecessary. The conductor, whose face I see clearly from my vantage point, conducts with much enthusiasm and joy. The production is sparkling and great fun to watch.
At intermission, a woman squeezes past me to compliment the timpanist. A tuner comes to tune the pianoforte. A knowledgeable English couple explain to me the difference between a pianoforte and a harpsichord: the pianoforte hits the strings while the harpsichord plucks them. They ask the tuner who made the pianoforte.
The trumpets have removable pieces. They are all laid out on cloths in front of them, labeled “si, mi, fa.” The players put the right piece in for the key of each part of the music. This requires constant switching among them. I had been thinking the trumpet parts looked boring, and they certainly had lots of measures of rest to count, but switching instruments for every sequence of notes would keep the music simple by necessity.
After the opera I take the bus to Place de Clichy. It is Sunday night and I know the brasserie Wepler will be open as it was last week. I order the seafood risotto I had enjoyed last week, and then have the porc à la normande with apples and wonderful cheese-laced potatoes.
I return with my goodies to the apartment. Since it is Saturday, the painter is not in the entryway of the apartment building. He has been there every day since Monday, and the small entryway is not finished yet.
This evening I have been invited to the rented apartment of Anselm and Margriet, two of the people from the Fodor’s get-together, for dinner. I bring an apricot tart, and they cook and serve all sorts of wonderful things from the markets. They have a wonderful apartment in the Marais, with a great dining room complete with fireplace. Just the thing for a dinner party. We talk about language, life, politics, and our imaginary friends. Delightful.
Sunday morning I walk toward the Square des Batignolles and arrive at the square just as people are getting out of church. There are many families with young children and the atmosphere is festive. There is a brocante market to stroll about and it is a much less claustrophobic environment than the big show at the Bastille had been. Less high end merchandise, and nobody seems to mind me taking photos.
The park is filled with parents and toddlers. They have all come, it seems, to visit the ducks. Interesting, colorful ducks they are too.
Lunch is olive bread, cheese and paté from the organic market.
I take the bus after lunch to the Théatre des Champs Elysées, where I have a ticket to see the opera Cosi Fan Tutte. Before the performance there is an introductory talk, and I have signed up to go hear it. We are directed to walk around to the rear of the building and go through the entrée des artistes. Down a long flight of stairs into a dance studio set up with chairs for the conférence.
There is the expected number of people wearing red coats and sweaters and scarves amid the sea of black. There seem to be fewer gray-haired women here, though, than in the crowd of a similar age at the Collège de France.
What I get out of the introductory talk: The couples in Cosi Fan Tutte switch partners when the two men come in disguise to attempt to seduce the two sisters to prove the women’s fidelity or lack thereof. The new couples are more alike in temperament than the original ones but at the end everyone returns to their partners, underlining the point that love is better when two people complement or complete each other than when they are too much alike. And when the two men boast of their attributes, a moustache is not just a moustache.
My seat for the performance is in the last seat in the first row. There is no orchestra pit. I am sitting in the trumpet section; I can literally read their music. This perspective feels familiar. The orchestra is young and good-looking. This is less familiar. The gorgeous woman on timpani is chatting up the two trumpet players. The equally gorgeous pianist is practicing. They are playing period instruments. Well, I don’t know about the timpani. The pianist has a long scarf that dangles past the keyboard. Better her than me. And my piano teacher would have made me take off that dangly watch. The bass player’s instrument has a fantastic carved scroll.
The guy sitting next to me has brought a libretto. There are surtitles in French, however, which makes a libretto unnecessary. The conductor, whose face I see clearly from my vantage point, conducts with much enthusiasm and joy. The production is sparkling and great fun to watch.
At intermission, a woman squeezes past me to compliment the timpanist. A tuner comes to tune the pianoforte. A knowledgeable English couple explain to me the difference between a pianoforte and a harpsichord: the pianoforte hits the strings while the harpsichord plucks them. They ask the tuner who made the pianoforte.
The trumpets have removable pieces. They are all laid out on cloths in front of them, labeled “si, mi, fa.” The players put the right piece in for the key of each part of the music. This requires constant switching among them. I had been thinking the trumpet parts looked boring, and they certainly had lots of measures of rest to count, but switching instruments for every sequence of notes would keep the music simple by necessity.
After the opera I take the bus to Place de Clichy. It is Sunday night and I know the brasserie Wepler will be open as it was last week. I order the seafood risotto I had enjoyed last week, and then have the porc à la normande with apples and wonderful cheese-laced potatoes.
Nov 25th, 2008, 12:57 PM
#28
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Enjoying the trip report very much! I agree about November and February. The only thing that makes February a little bit better is I have a birthday to look forward to! I am missing Paris terribly and this is both a good temporary fix and torture!
Enjoying the trip report very much! I agree about November and February. The only thing that makes February a little bit better is I have a birthday to look forward to! I am missing Paris terribly and this is both a good temporary fix and torture!
Nov 25th, 2008, 01:39 PM
#29
Original Poster
As I leave the apartment building on Monday I see that the painter is back. He has extended his work from the entryway through the door into the hall. Progress is being made.
Today I have my last class at the Collège de France. This one is about Gaul in the aftermath of Caesar’s conquest. I know next to nothing about Gaul, but I have been reading about ancient Rome, so I figure I might get something out of this. The large lecture hall is completely filled and the professor gets applause when he enters the room; he is apparently a favorite of the students here.
The class is devoted to a discussion of “the gold of Toulouse”, a reputed treasure brought to Toulouse from a raid on Delphi in Greece. The lecturer analyzes historical sources and contemporary texts to get at the truth behind the legend. It is very interesting, and I regret that I do not get a number of cultural references and the very dry wit of the lecturer. Jokes are the hardest things to translate. The woman next to me looks toward me when everybody laughs and I smile along with the joke, wishing I got it.
After the class I walk to Place Maubert. It is too early for a Paris dinner, but I have opera tickets at 7:30, so I go to the Café du Métro and order a salade Auvergnate, with ham, cantal cheese, walnuts, oiled potatoes and greens for 12 euros.
I take the bus to the Bastille and enter the opera house. I have not been in the main hall here before. I am seated in the orchestra (well, not actually next to the musicians as I was yesterday, just in the ground floor section). The balconies appear to be extremely high and far from the stage. One would need opera glasses up there.
This is my second Mozart opera in two nights, but this production of The Magic Flute is as different as possible from yesterday’s production of Cosi Fan Tutte. It has been staged by the Catalan theatrical company La Fura dels Baus. The scenery is a set of huge inflatable mattresses. There are women with light-up breasts. People are singing lying down. Carnival balls are released and bounce all over the stage. This injects a new degree of apprehension into the theatrical expression “break a leg”.
Reviews of previous incarnations of this production said that the spoken dialogue had been replaced by readers on stage reciting seemingly unrelated texts. This has been eliminated for the current incarnation. The story of the opera is absurd, so an absurdist interpretation does not seem so out of character to me. It also seems to fit the hall. The ceiling actually resembles the inflatable mattress, at least to my eye.
There are cheers and boos both at intermission and at the end of the opera. I have been looking for reviews in the press, but haven’t found them yet.
Today I have my last class at the Collège de France. This one is about Gaul in the aftermath of Caesar’s conquest. I know next to nothing about Gaul, but I have been reading about ancient Rome, so I figure I might get something out of this. The large lecture hall is completely filled and the professor gets applause when he enters the room; he is apparently a favorite of the students here.
The class is devoted to a discussion of “the gold of Toulouse”, a reputed treasure brought to Toulouse from a raid on Delphi in Greece. The lecturer analyzes historical sources and contemporary texts to get at the truth behind the legend. It is very interesting, and I regret that I do not get a number of cultural references and the very dry wit of the lecturer. Jokes are the hardest things to translate. The woman next to me looks toward me when everybody laughs and I smile along with the joke, wishing I got it.
After the class I walk to Place Maubert. It is too early for a Paris dinner, but I have opera tickets at 7:30, so I go to the Café du Métro and order a salade Auvergnate, with ham, cantal cheese, walnuts, oiled potatoes and greens for 12 euros.
I take the bus to the Bastille and enter the opera house. I have not been in the main hall here before. I am seated in the orchestra (well, not actually next to the musicians as I was yesterday, just in the ground floor section). The balconies appear to be extremely high and far from the stage. One would need opera glasses up there.
This is my second Mozart opera in two nights, but this production of The Magic Flute is as different as possible from yesterday’s production of Cosi Fan Tutte. It has been staged by the Catalan theatrical company La Fura dels Baus. The scenery is a set of huge inflatable mattresses. There are women with light-up breasts. People are singing lying down. Carnival balls are released and bounce all over the stage. This injects a new degree of apprehension into the theatrical expression “break a leg”.
Reviews of previous incarnations of this production said that the spoken dialogue had been replaced by readers on stage reciting seemingly unrelated texts. This has been eliminated for the current incarnation. The story of the opera is absurd, so an absurdist interpretation does not seem so out of character to me. It also seems to fit the hall. The ceiling actually resembles the inflatable mattress, at least to my eye.
There are cheers and boos both at intermission and at the end of the opera. I have been looking for reviews in the press, but haven’t found them yet.
Nov 26th, 2008, 02:24 AM
#34
Original Poster
Thank you everyone for the kind words. It is my intention to finish this up before I have to drive to New York tomorrow for Thanksgiving.
Leely, I was applauding but shaking my head in bafflement. It was an enjoyable experience.
Leely, I was applauding but shaking my head in bafflement. It was an enjoyable experience.
Nov 26th, 2008, 09:45 AM
#38
Original Poster
Tuesday is my last full day in Paris. I have tentatively scheduled myself to go to a free lunchtime concert at the Eglise Saint Roch, but it is Mozart and I’m thinking I can miss it, I’ve filled my quota of Mozart the past two days. So I take the bus to have lunch at the Café Constant, 139 rue St. Dominique, in the 7th arrondissement. I arrive before they start serving lunch but there are several people drinking at the bar, and the bartender invites me to sit at a table until they are ready to take my order. This small restaurant does not take reservations, so I had wanted to get there early to ensure a seat. But seats remain available throughout my visit.
I order from the menu, which is 16 euros for two courses, either entrée/plat, or plat/dessert. There is only one choice for each course on the blackboard. There is also a full carte. I start with moules de bouchot, tasty mussels from the bay at Mont St. Michel. Then I have tourte de faisan, sauce grand veneur (pheasant in pastry with a rich game sauce), and this is outstandingly delicious.
After lunch I walk to the Champ de Mars with the idea of relaxing in the park and taking photos of the Tour Eiffel. People keep stooping in the puddles and trying to get my attention. I know this is a scam in which a person pretends to find a gold ring on the ground and gives it to you, then demands money in return. So I keep walking and don’t respond. After a couple of these attempts it becomes comical, like something out of Mad Magazine. People are falling over in front of me left and right. This is not relaxing.
So I take the bus to my next destination, l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Saint Germain, across the Seine from the Louvre. I am here to see the exhibit “Academia, qui es-tu?” in the venerable art school. I enter the courtyard of the school and see students having their lunch at a long picnic table. It is not exactly picnic weather, but it isn’t actually raining at this moment, which is as good as it gets.
The exhibit is in the chapel. Art of all types hangs and is placed everywhere: ancient, classic, modern, contemporary, ethnic. Photographs by Richard Avedon and Robert Mapplethorpe and drawings by Picasso hang above a bronze sixteenth century Tibetan lama and a first century marble torso of Venus. There is art in every nook and cranny, densely layered like a cabinet of curiosities.
Students are sketching around the chapel. Sofas at both ends of the room allow visitors to sit and hunt through the photos in the catalogue to identify the works on display. This is the antithesis of the white walled gallery.
I have printed out a long explanation from the school’s website outlining the thought behind the exhibit. I don’t think it is just because it is in French that I find it impenetrable. Something about the question in Plato’s academy being “who are you?” and about art creating a dialogue, and about contemporary art creating that dialogue in a radically different cultural environment than that of earlier art forms. Fair enough, but how does this explain the overwhelming cacophony of periods and styles?
As I am riding the bus home, a car drives up alongside the bus and honks its horn continuously. At the traffic light before Opéra, the car’s driver starts shouting at the bus driver. “Qu’est-ce que j’ai fait?” asks the bus driver. It is never made clear to me what the car driver thinks the bus driver has done, but the two drivers exchange information. The bus driver remains admirably composed. Was there a collision? I missed it if there was.
An older gentleman getting on the bus throws up his hands. “Il ya a toujours quelque chose ici!” (It’s always something.) He strides off the bus in disgust. Finally a determined Parisian lady walks up from the back of the bus and makes if clear to both drivers in a forceful voice that “il faut quitter!” Her point is made, the bus driver insists to the car driver that indeed he has to leave, and we drive off.
This is the second bus incident I have noted. Earlier in the week, I was riding a bus that was about to cross a bridge over the Seine when we passed a lamp post that had been knocked over, presumably by a bus that was stopped in front of it on the bridge. Our driver stopped the bus on the bridge to go talk to the other driver, then got back on the bus and drove off.
Every day on the bus, I pass the Gare St. Lazare. I used to have a poster of a Monet painting of the station in my college dorm room, but I hadn’t realized the connection the area had with the Impressionist painters until I read a little book about the Impressionists’ Paris in my apartment. Many of them lived and painted in the area, which had been reconstructed during the redesign of Paris by Baron Haussmann in the nineteenth century. The enlarged station and the new broad streets named after European capital cities were seen as symbols of the changes caused in Parisian life by urban growth and industrialization.
The bus stop where I transfer is on the very spot painted by Gustave Caillebotte on the Pont d’Europe, crossing above the tracks leading from the station. I consider attempting to duplicate the angle in a photo, but the electronic sign at the bus stop tells me my bus is approaching. The progression of technology in this city continues apace.
I stop at the bakery for a last apricot tart, go back to the apartment and dine on the lovely leftovers, pack my bags and cap off this week of French culture by watching American TV shows dubbed in French before I go to bed.
I have ordered a shuttle to take me to the airport Wednesday morning from World Shuttle (www.world-shuttles.com), and it arrives just five minutes after the time I had specified. I am the only passenger and we get to the airport quickly, although I see that traffic going back into Paris is very heavy. The plane is not full and I have a comfortable row of two seats to arrange my stuff and read and write. Unlike my flight from Boston, this plane has no seatback video. This means there is more space under the seats in front of me. It is a tradeoff: no French movies, but greater comfort.
The plane arrives on time in Boston, I am on the curb half an hour later, and Eileen is there to pick me up. It’s really cold in Boston. Back to reality.
I order from the menu, which is 16 euros for two courses, either entrée/plat, or plat/dessert. There is only one choice for each course on the blackboard. There is also a full carte. I start with moules de bouchot, tasty mussels from the bay at Mont St. Michel. Then I have tourte de faisan, sauce grand veneur (pheasant in pastry with a rich game sauce), and this is outstandingly delicious.
After lunch I walk to the Champ de Mars with the idea of relaxing in the park and taking photos of the Tour Eiffel. People keep stooping in the puddles and trying to get my attention. I know this is a scam in which a person pretends to find a gold ring on the ground and gives it to you, then demands money in return. So I keep walking and don’t respond. After a couple of these attempts it becomes comical, like something out of Mad Magazine. People are falling over in front of me left and right. This is not relaxing.
So I take the bus to my next destination, l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Saint Germain, across the Seine from the Louvre. I am here to see the exhibit “Academia, qui es-tu?” in the venerable art school. I enter the courtyard of the school and see students having their lunch at a long picnic table. It is not exactly picnic weather, but it isn’t actually raining at this moment, which is as good as it gets.
The exhibit is in the chapel. Art of all types hangs and is placed everywhere: ancient, classic, modern, contemporary, ethnic. Photographs by Richard Avedon and Robert Mapplethorpe and drawings by Picasso hang above a bronze sixteenth century Tibetan lama and a first century marble torso of Venus. There is art in every nook and cranny, densely layered like a cabinet of curiosities.
Students are sketching around the chapel. Sofas at both ends of the room allow visitors to sit and hunt through the photos in the catalogue to identify the works on display. This is the antithesis of the white walled gallery.
I have printed out a long explanation from the school’s website outlining the thought behind the exhibit. I don’t think it is just because it is in French that I find it impenetrable. Something about the question in Plato’s academy being “who are you?” and about art creating a dialogue, and about contemporary art creating that dialogue in a radically different cultural environment than that of earlier art forms. Fair enough, but how does this explain the overwhelming cacophony of periods and styles?
As I am riding the bus home, a car drives up alongside the bus and honks its horn continuously. At the traffic light before Opéra, the car’s driver starts shouting at the bus driver. “Qu’est-ce que j’ai fait?” asks the bus driver. It is never made clear to me what the car driver thinks the bus driver has done, but the two drivers exchange information. The bus driver remains admirably composed. Was there a collision? I missed it if there was.
An older gentleman getting on the bus throws up his hands. “Il ya a toujours quelque chose ici!” (It’s always something.) He strides off the bus in disgust. Finally a determined Parisian lady walks up from the back of the bus and makes if clear to both drivers in a forceful voice that “il faut quitter!” Her point is made, the bus driver insists to the car driver that indeed he has to leave, and we drive off.
This is the second bus incident I have noted. Earlier in the week, I was riding a bus that was about to cross a bridge over the Seine when we passed a lamp post that had been knocked over, presumably by a bus that was stopped in front of it on the bridge. Our driver stopped the bus on the bridge to go talk to the other driver, then got back on the bus and drove off.
Every day on the bus, I pass the Gare St. Lazare. I used to have a poster of a Monet painting of the station in my college dorm room, but I hadn’t realized the connection the area had with the Impressionist painters until I read a little book about the Impressionists’ Paris in my apartment. Many of them lived and painted in the area, which had been reconstructed during the redesign of Paris by Baron Haussmann in the nineteenth century. The enlarged station and the new broad streets named after European capital cities were seen as symbols of the changes caused in Parisian life by urban growth and industrialization.
The bus stop where I transfer is on the very spot painted by Gustave Caillebotte on the Pont d’Europe, crossing above the tracks leading from the station. I consider attempting to duplicate the angle in a photo, but the electronic sign at the bus stop tells me my bus is approaching. The progression of technology in this city continues apace.
I stop at the bakery for a last apricot tart, go back to the apartment and dine on the lovely leftovers, pack my bags and cap off this week of French culture by watching American TV shows dubbed in French before I go to bed.
I have ordered a shuttle to take me to the airport Wednesday morning from World Shuttle (www.world-shuttles.com), and it arrives just five minutes after the time I had specified. I am the only passenger and we get to the airport quickly, although I see that traffic going back into Paris is very heavy. The plane is not full and I have a comfortable row of two seats to arrange my stuff and read and write. Unlike my flight from Boston, this plane has no seatback video. This means there is more space under the seats in front of me. It is a tradeoff: no French movies, but greater comfort.
The plane arrives on time in Boston, I am on the curb half an hour later, and Eileen is there to pick me up. It’s really cold in Boston. Back to reality.
Nov 26th, 2008, 11:02 AM
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This was magnificent! Thank you for sharing. I'm so excited for my trip to Paris next month now, I'm trying to contain myself from screaming in my office. Thanks for the inspiration and all of the information!
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving
