Le Marais for Musicians

PARIS IN THOUSANDS OF SONGS

If ever there was a superlative city, Paris is the one. Whether gastronomy or protest marches, fashion or romance...   everything gets amplified in Paris. And celebrated in songs. Thousands of songs have been written about Paris since the 19th century, a mindboggling figure no other city can match.  Prompted by love, by yearning, by anger, rage, indignation, frustration, commiseration... even boredom. Songs are so evocative of Paris that they seem to grow out of her cobblestones.  Easily identifiable, they wail out of street organs, bounce to accordions, sway to guitars, pour out of hearts, burst out of the guts. Some spill over international borders and into foreign languages; and although George Gershwin celebrated Paris in music only, he did claim that songs could have only two topics — Paris and love.

Songs are nurtured in France as cultural heritage. Exhibitions around well-known singers and song writers are held in Paris every so often — Edith Piaf, Yves Montand, Georges Brassens have been celebrated in recent years for several months each... But now, for the first time, it is Paris herself that is placed centre stage, in the heart of the Marais— "Paris en chansons". The exhibition was was co- inaugurated by the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë and Juliette Gréco, the patron of the exhibition. An exceptional collection of sound and audiovisual archives, photos, engravings, record sleeves, posters, music sheets, are on display, not to mention rare recordings. Alongside a selection of hundreds of song, this makes for an exciting immersion in the history of Paris and the daily life of its people, both the reality and very much the myth, going back to Clément Janequin's Les cris de Paris  (circa 1520), the oldest song to have reached us.

For the most part, this is the Paris of ordinary people, le Paris populaire and city's bloodlife, vociferous, rebellious and passionate, already demanding from the top of barricades the departure of Mazarin, back in 1648, storming the Bastille in 1789, raging once more in 1848, and once again in May 1871, that "bloody week" of the Commune, when Paris was all aflame and 20,000 or more of her people, men, women and children, lay massacred in her streets. The bulk of the songs, however,  starts only in the 19th century. Our perception of them as organically  inherent to the city is, as usual, a myth.  In effect,  they were the products of the new entertainment industry that catered to the new leisure society, and often performed at the café-concerts as immortalised by several painters. Be that as it may, they did become one with the city and do ring true.  

At the forefront  was bourgeois bashing Aristide Bruant with his broad-brimmed black hat and red scarf, his sartorial trademark that has long been recycled  into a commercial commodity. Lesser known are the actual lyrics of his songs. Take the time to listen and be drawn  into the derelict and seedy faubourgs and their underworld — Montmartre, Pigalle, Batignolles, rue de Lappe..., a Paris now gone but recorded in black-and-white print by the likes of  Eugène Atget and Charles Marville, a dangerous Paris most of us would have avoided, operating after dark in the shadow of the guillotine. For a comparative stroll into the sanitised future, detour to the nearby Pavillon de l'Arsenal, on the eastern edge of the Marais, where a scale model of the renovation project of Batignolles is currently on display, a comparison made all the more illuminating when one keeps in mind that Batignolles was the home ground of the Impressionists!

Stroll through the moveable feast of the 1920s/30s in the company of Josephine Baker, Charles Trenet, Maurice Chevalier, Mistinguett and many others. By now the leafy gas-lit open-air caf'conc'  will have made way for the music halls and their dazzling reviews whose success was made by their star singer(s). Electric recordings, the commercialisation of the radio and the arrival of the talkies will have altogether revolutionised the  industry. The cinema became the "dream factory" of ordinary people and films were being produced for the sole purpose of offering star singers a platform. Yet, in the Paris of the faubourgs people still sang in the streets, prompted by a group leader who would sell them music sheets for a penny. Such music sheets are on display, and you can also enjoy a delightful extract of René Clair's Sous les toîts de Paris. Or make your way to rue Mouffetard on a Sunday morning for a similar experience. Perhaps elsewhere too; I wouldn't know.

Stop at post-war Saint-Germain-des-Prés, an explosion of joy to jazzy rhythms, blown by the likes of trumpeter Boris Vian. La chanson française, as inherited from Bruant,  now struck roots here big time, down in the basements underground. Donning her iconic black dress, Juliette Gréco interpreted the songs of poet Jacques Prévert, occasionally Sartre's.  Hang on here into the 1950s — Léo Ferré, Georges Brassens, Jacques Brel, Barbara, Guy Béart... a golden age, spilling into the 1960 with additional voices, not least   Jean Ferrat's,  the social conscience of the 1968 generation, also known for putting to music and interpreting the superb poetry of Louis Aragon.  

Paris has changed a lot in the last forty years; its city centre has been gentrified; the faubourgs have been taken over by the bobos. Yet the tradition of la chanson française persists; it has simply shifted quarters, from Pigalle to Barbès for example, and adjusted to new times. Interactive terminals connected to a virtual map of the city, enable visitors not only to pick and choose among some 200 songs and countless singers, but also to situate them in their street or neighbourhood. It is amazing to discover that so much of Paris has been covered in song! even little side streets, both remote or in central Paris. It is equally amazing to what extent the city's monuments are ignored, other than the Eiffel Tower! Instead, it is the metro, the corner cafés, the night life, the hardships of daily life that are celebrated, even the boredom of a 9 to 5 job, proof if need be that the paths trodden by the dwellers  of this city seldom cross those taken by  tourists. If you love music, if you wish to increase your grasp of Paris and capture its atmosphere, take a plunge  into this heartwarming exhibition.

Paris en chansons
Galeries des Bibliothèques
22 rue Malher Paris 4e
Open daily except Mondays from 1 to 7pm, till 9pm Thursdays.
Through July 29th, 2012

Château Operatics

Watching an opera outdoors is an altogether different experience from seeing one in a theater. What is lost in sound quality (since amplification is necessary and the wind blows away some of the sound) is often made up for by a special combination of factors that have more to do with the setting and the weather than the production itself. At last year’s outdoor performance of La Bohème, for example, which was staged in front of the French Senate’s (formerly Marie de Medici’s) palace in the Luxembourg Garden, Mimi’s death scene was rendered unforgettable as the atmosphere turned pink with the sunset and a flock of birds flew silently over the stage.

Since 2001, a production company called Akouna has been staging outdoor operas against the magnificent backdrop of châteaux in and around Paris. The company’s mission is to give young talents a chance to strut their stuff. The leading roles for this year's production of Verdi's La Traviata have been double-cast, with the American couple Malinda Haslett and Jonathan Boyd alternating with Evelyn Bohen and Thomas Blondelle, both from Belgium, as Violetta and Alfredo.
While the musical director David Levi is an old hand at opera and musicals, many of the production’s backstage roles are being played by newcomers to the world of opera this year. First-time director Henry-Jean Servat, a journalist and author of a number of books, has brought in the à la mode interior decorator Jacques Garcia (the Hôtel Costes is his œuvre) to create the opera's scenery, which includes two gigantic baroque chairs and an enormous, elaborate gilt frame center stage. The red squiggle against a black background inside the frame, which could be interpreted as a profile of

A production of Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" staged in front of the Château de Vaux Le Vicomte.

Violetta, is supposed to represent an AIDS ribbon, the unspoken idea being that Violetta is dying from AIDS rather than consumption, a nod to our times and Verdi’s wish that the opera be staged in keeping with the era in which it was performed.
Servat also convinced fashion designer Franck Sorbier to create sumptuous costumes for the opera and Swarovski jewelers to lend the elaborate necklace worn by Maria Callas in the first act of Luchino Visconti’s production of La Traviata at La Scala in Milan. During the second and third act, the sopranos will also be wearing necklaces worn by Callas in performances of La Traviata and La Tosca.

This year, Akouna will stage La Traviata in four stunning settings: in addition to the Senate, there will be performances at the Château de Vaux Le Vicomte in Melun, the Domaine de Sceaux and the Château du Champ du Bataille near Rouen. The first is in Paris, the second and third reachable by public transport within about 30-40 minutes, and the third about an hour from Paris.
Opéra en Plein Air: Tel: 08 92 70 79 20. www.operaenpleinair.com. Prices range from 36 to 66 euros, with special VIP treatment at 180-250 euros.