Teenagers!
Newsletter 10.09.2022
Bienvenue and welcome back to Musée Musings, your idiosyncratic guide to Paris and art. This week, I am happy to say, I plunged right back in to the life that I live and love here in Paris. Often alone, but not always, and when alone, with you in mind, thinking about how I will share the exhibitions I am seeing with you. And for that, I am truly grateful. Thank you.
For some religions and cultures, the New Year is a moveable feast, linked to the moon as well as the sun and so not fixed in our Gregorian calendar. In fact, before the Julian calendar established January 1 as the beginning of the new year (in 45 B.C.E.), the Roman Empire celebrated it in March, when crops were planted. The year ended in December, harvest time in temperate Rome. The short on light, long on cold days between December and March didn’t even merit a name.
Which brings me, rather circuitously, to what a good idea it is to celebrate the new year in the fall which is when it is celebrated in the Jewish calendar. Sometimes as early as early September, sometimes as late as early October. Not because the dates change but because the Jewish calendar and the Gregorian calendar aren’t synchronized. Celebrating the New Year in the fall coincides with when people pack up their summer homes in the countryside and return to the city, with the rentrée, when children go back to school after their summer break and with when cultural institutions, like opera houses and museums, begin their season.
And that brings me to what a wonderful time of year it is to be here, in Paris. A couple days before I left for the Dordogne last month, I received an email from the Opera de Paris, inviting me to a ‘flash sale’. It’s one of those - you snooze, you lose moments. If you think about it too long, the tickets will all be gone. So I bought my ticket immediately for a few days after I returned from the Dordogne. Which ticket did I buy? The most expensive one, of course. Because dear friends, I firmly believe that the more you spend, at least at sales, the more you save! Simple mathematics. Trust me.
The opera I saw last week was The Capulets and Montagues. (Figure 1) It was my third encounter with Romeo and Juliet in the past 18 months. The first was shortly after public performance spaces opened last spring following Covid Confinement. I went, masked, (as law required that I remain throughout the performance) with proof of Covid vaccination on an app on my telephone, to the Opéra Bastille to see the ballet Romeo and Juliet. Based on Shakespeare’s tale, with music by Sergei Prokofiev and choreography by Rudolf Nureyev. (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Les Capulet et les Montaigu, Opéra, Opéra Bastille
Figure 2. Romeo et Juliette, Ballet de l’Opera, Opéra Bastille
It’s a long ballet - three acts with two intermissions. And it’s sumptuous. The costumes, the scenery, the music, and of course the dancing! I’m not usually a fan of story ballets because they often descend into pantomime. I prefer bodies moving to music. That’s really all you need, well all I need. But this was different, maybe because the scenery and costumes made me feel as if I was watching an Italian Renaissance painting become a tableau vivant become a tableau mouvant (Figures 3, 4).
Figure 3. Scene from Romeo et Juliette Ballet
Figure 4. St. Bernardino Preaching, 1462, Vecchietta
A few months later, last November to be exact, I received an email from Radio France, which is in my old neighborhood in the 16th, which is where, when I lived across the street, I went a couple times a week. Now, it’s a little inconvenient to get there from the 11th. But I always DO synchronize a concert at Radio France with a temporary exhibition at the Musée Monet-Marmottan.
The program at Radio France that evening was part of The Keys of the Orchestra series, hosted by Jean-François Zygel. (Figure 5) It reminded me of the San Francisco Symphony’s Thursday morning Open Rehearsals that I attended regularly for years. The best were when Michael Tilson Thomas was home, conducting them. He would often turn to address the audience and explain a point he had just been making to the musicians. It was fun but it was frustrating, too. The end of the rehearsal didn’t always mean the end of the piece. On my way out, I would sometimes just buy a ticket for that evening so I could hear the entire program, this time, uninterrupted.
Figure 5. Jean-Francois Zygel at Radio France with orchestra performing Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet
The premise at the concert I attended at Radio France is the same. The music was Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. Zygel, an accomplished pianist, explains various points and then illustrates them sometimes on the piano, sometimes with the full orchestra.
Both MTT and Zygel base their programs on MTT’s mentor, Leonard Bernstein and his Young People's Concerts. The music was fabulous but there were those darn stops and starts. I learned a great deal and it enhanced, in retrospect, the ballet I had seen a few months earlier. Both based upon Shakespeare’s play. Both lush and lovely.
The score for the opera I saw last Saturday, I Capuleti e i Montecchi (The Capulets and Montagues) was written by the Sicilian composer, Vincenzo Bellini. The Genovese poet Felice Romani wrote the libretto. And a play written in 1818 by the Italian dramatist, Luigi Scevola, was the source. According to the opera notes, Scevola’s play is much darker than Shakespeare’s. It’s not a quarrel between two families but the threat of war between two armies.
When I first arrived I thought I had made a terrible mistake. I was sitting so close that I couldn’t see the surtitles above the stage without doing acrobatics with my eyes. Thank goodness translations of the Italian lyrics, in French and English were also projected on both sides of the stage. And those I could easily see.
Probably because I don’t go to the opera often, well, certainly not often enough, I want period costumes and lavish sets. I’m obviously not the only one who shies away from contemporary costumes and minimalist stage sets. Thus the Flash Sale.
And in this opera, the role of Romeo is sung by a woman. Because the part was written for a mezzo-soprano. In email exchanges with my new friend JF, I learned that other opera houses have rewritten the music for a tenor. So a man can sing the part. It’s not that I am unfamiliar with non-traditional casting - I saw lots of performances of The Christmas Carol by San Francisco’s A.C.T. Rainbow families don’t phase me. But why this role was written to be sung by a woman, I don’t know. It isn’t the same as young men playing female roles because respectable women didn’t choose careers as actors. Happily, It was less off putting than I imagined it would be, although this Romeo was very slight and this Juliette was very round.
Thank goodness there was enough ‘periodness’ with both the set and the costumes that I was able to willingly suspend my disbelief and immerse myself in the drama. The set was just a backdrop really, but it was a magnificent one - huge and blood red, just the right size for majesty, just the right color for tragedy. (Figure 6) The cast included an all male chorus, all dressed in tight waisted, knee length velvet or satin trousers with matching sleeveless tops over full length sleeves that matched their tights. They all held swords. The Capulets wore red, the Montagues wore black.
Figure 6. The Capulets and Montagues, Opéra Bastille, Red set, Capulets in red, Montagues in black
Figure 6a.
There were only five principal singers - and of them, only one female. Juliette - with no mother to counsel her, no maid to comfort her. The woman originally intended to sing the role of Juliette was a no-show. The woman next to me was so angry. She had paid full price and she had come to hear that woman sing. I was a little more sanguine, I had paid half price and I didn’t know one singer from the next!
Juliette wore a long white robe. In one scene, she is in her bedroom, an unadorned space with a simple single bed and a huge cross above it. (Figure 7) At one point, she kneels before a simple wooden trunk. It reminded me of cassoni, the marriage chests in which Renaissance brides put their clothes and linens, their dowries. (Figure 8) If this was Juliette’s cassone, she was destined never to use it, never to take it with her to her marriage bed.
Figure 7. Juliette on her bed, a huge cross right above it, Capulets and Montagues, Opéra Bastille
Figure 8. Italian 16th century cassone (marriage chest)
Not only was this story starker than the Romeo and Juliet tale we know, but the motivation behind Romeo’s decisions and Juliette’s own seem so much at odds. Romeo tries to convince Juliette that their love is more important than anything else. That she should abandon her father and run away with him. But Romeo had inadvertently killed her brother. Juliette’s hesitation was motivated by filial piety.
Romeo rushes to Juliette’s family tomb when he learns that she has died. She is lying there, deadly still. It’s a pose reminiscent of a pre-Raphaelite painting. (Figures 9, 10) With no reason to live, Romeo swallows the vial of poison he has brought with him. When Juliette awakens and finds Romeo there, she assumes that her doctor/advisor Lorenzo has told him about the potion she had taken to make her appear dead and thus avoid marrying Tybald, her father’s choice for her hand in marriage. But Lorenzo screwed up, as he did in Shakespeare’s version. He hadn’t managed to get word to Romeo. So the lovers only have time for a brief kiss before the poison works and Romeo dies. Distraught, Juliette takes Romeo’s knife and plunges it into her abdomen. A very manly way to die. The opera ends with the hope that the death of these young lovers will avert the war that has been threatened.
Figure 9. Juliette dead, Montagues pay their respect before Romeo arrives, Opéra Bastille
Figure 10. Ophelia dead, John Vincent Millais, 1851
It was a very satisfying way to begin the fall season. An orchestra seat for a three hour opera just a 10 minute walk from home! (Figure 11)
Figure 11. The Bastille Monument at night.
What else have I been up to? Well, on Sunday morning I met a friend, a French friend, who is for some reason (probably the same reason French people go to Las Vegas) obsessed with American brunch. We went to a modest cafe modestly called, Breakfast in America. We split a huge plate of scrambled eggs, filled with sautéed mushrooms, red peppers and onions with bacon, sausage and ham piled high on a generous portion of home fries. Oh, and melted cheddar cheese, too. And three pancakes. And maybe, real maple syrup. (Figure 12) It was pretty good. It checked all the boxes. After that we wandered around for a while, finally deciding a meringue at Aux Merveilleux de Fred was what we really needed. (Figure 13) There are a few of these meringue and cream patisseries around town, and if you only eat 1/2 of a small one you are not likely to keel over, even after a brunch like that.
Figure 12. Breakfast in America, Marais, Paris
Figure 13. A chocolate meringue from Aux Merveilleux de Fred
Of course, I saw a few exhibitions last week, about which, more soon. At the Musée Jacquemart-Andre was an exhibition on the Swiss artist Fuseli who made his career in England painting scenes from Shakespeare, like this one of Romeo and Juliet. (Figure 14) And an exhibition at the Musée Luxembourg, about the art and artifacts from distant places collected by the Price Electors of Saxony. (Figure 15). And at the Carnavalet, an exhibition entitled Parisiennes Citoyennes! Engagements pour l’émancipation des femmes (1789- 2000). (Figure 16) As with the Proust exhibition a few months ago, there were lots of written documents, almost impossible to get close enough to see, let alone to read. It began with Olympe de Gouges, author of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen who was guillotined in 1793, two weeks after Marie Antoinette. The exhibition ends with Simone Weil, who fought for female reproductive rights here in France. The entire exhibition was a stark reminder of how shockingly easy it was for one president to pack a court and then for the rest of us to watch in disbelief as that court begins to dismantle the rights that women (and others) have worked so long and so hard to achieve.
Until next week! Gros Bisous, Dr. B
Figure 14. Romeo discovering Juliette, Johann Fredrich Fuseli, 1809
Figure 15. Mirror du Monde, Musée du Luxembourg
Figure 16. Parisiennes Citoyennes, Musée Carnavalet
Readers’ Comments for which I am very grateful. Thank you!
Oh my herring guy! He has wonderful Polish brown bread, pickles, chou and of course herrings. I should have gone to Bastille today! Next Sunday for sure. Your Dordogne trip looks enticing Cheers, Carol, Paris
I also thought the Biennale was on for a limited time. You make it sound very tempting. Perhaps you might consider guiding a group through it one year. I'd come! With your insights and knowledge of the artists it would be so much more meaningful and interesting. Think about it. I've never even been to Venice, imagine that! Sharon, Haifa
Wow! I feel like I was there with you. Thank you for the “ ride”. I have been to Venice a few times but never when the festival was on. Deedee
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