Notes from Paris
I just returned from four days in Paris, my first trip there in over twenty five years. This grand city is more immune to change than any other large metropolis, largely due to the exclusion of most highrise buildings from outside the traditional city walls area. So where New York is a city in constant flux, Paris is not. I had a couple of musical experiences there.
Opera: Antonio Salieri Les Horaces (1786) at the Royal Opera, Versailles
Seeing a classical opera in a hall where Louis XVI would have seen similar fare in 1786, just before the revolution, was intriguing. The first violins fiddled while Rome burned, if you will. The small opera house is dazzling in architecture and ornamentation, but converts music listening to an activity of elite privilege (well, I guess it still is at the Met in NYC!). Salieri (1750-1826) was born about the same time as Mozart, but outlived him by 35 years. He was perhaps the most renowned composer of his time, the favorite of courts from Italy to Paris, and financially successful as Mozart was not. He composed for the French court, and skedaddled to Vienna just before the revolution. He's mostly known to Americans as the foil to the brilliant-but-juvenile Mozart in the film Amadeus, where he was portrayed as a jealous mediocrity who knows just how mediocre he is. The film aside, there's little real evidence that he was a bitter, jealous antagonist of Mozart. After all, success often breeds contentment (Donald Trump aside). On the other hand, Mozart was certainly bitter about Salieri's relative monopoly on royal commissions. What is certain is that Salieri's music, while lying easy on the ear to the nobility of 1780, seems pretty bland now. Classical-period music with pedestrian melody and lack of dynamic contrasts is pretty weak tea. It's easier to appreciate grade B baroque and romantic composers than those of the classical period, perhaps explaining why little classical literature besides Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven gets performed much now. Salieri's Les Horaces, about warfare in ancient Rome, was pretty dull. The music was well sung and generally well played by a period instruments ensemble, whose winds sometimes lacked the precision I am used to in New York and Berkeley. It was cool seeing the same subject in the Louvre a couple days later, here in a painting by Jacques-Louis David:
Opera: Tosca at the Paris National Opera
These days you cannot see opera at the wonderful 1875 Palais Garnier, now limited to ballet. The opera has moved to the Opera Bastille, an uninspired 1989 building designed to "blend into" the surrounding Plaza Bastille, itself not among the great places of Paris. At minimum I expected to see some cool outlandish French art there, but the lobby areas were limited in size, with only one very ugly statue of a blue steatopygian (right) as the sole decor. Oddly, I had not seen Puccini's Tosca live for 20 or more years. The Tuesday performance was pretty good, but reminded me of why I enjoy this opera more from recordings of the past (e.g. Maria Callas). Tosca, a melodrama about an actress who sacrifices all for her condemned lover while pursued by the Trumpian power-lech Barone Scarpia, has a very effective libretto and needs terrific singing actors with voices that can carry over the big Puccini orchestra. Its hard to find a cast up to these demands. Tuesday night both the Scarpia of Bryn Terfel and the Tosca of Liudmyla Monastyrska were impressive musically and vocally, with often thrilling fortes and subtle dynamic contrasts. The acting was just so-so, but was not helped by an ineffective setting and direction featuring an enormous brown wooden crucifix hovering over/under each act. In Act 1 singers walked and processed around on it making the whole stage dark brown (the libretto specifies the interior of a baroque Roman church), and in acts 2-3 it hovered above. This kind of "concept" that dominates the staging drives me crazy when it adds nothing of value to the experience. Tosca the actress certainly has her Catholicism eating at her, and religion does pervade the opera: Act 1 is set in a church, with the artist painting the Mary Magdalene, and ends with the Te Deum procession; the act 2 murder ends with Tosca placing crosses at the head of the dead Scarpia. But religion is not what the opera is about. It's about a famous actress who balances her art, reputation, religion, and love, and comes down firmly in favor of love as the guiding force of her actions. So the Big Crucifix concept seemed peripheral to me. Added to that were some cheap-looking sets in act 2. Red walls can certainly work to show angst, intensity and death...see Bergman Cries and Whispers...but these looked like they were painted by the high school prop department. Thus, this was a production that failed to support the singers or to add new insight.
Miscellaneous Paris notes
1. English is winning, for better or worse. While the Parisians remain reluctant to speak any language but French, the street advertising is approaching 50% English. And, at the opera, the projected supratitles translating the Italian libretto were English on top, French on bottom. Sacre bleu!
2. Why can't we get French quality ingredients in US markets? Go the the Rue des Martyrs near Montmartre and you will find, in three blocks, four fruit/vegetable markets, 3 bakeries, 2 patisseries, and an apparently normal supermarket that serves freshly squeezed no-pulp orange juice out of a magic machine. Starting your day with this kind of breakfast is magnifique.
3. Parisians still smoke too much (esp. the young), but much less than 20 years ago. Interior smoking is out in public places. But how in the world did the interior of the opera house smell like smoke?
4. Subway entertainment is much more to my taste, compared to NYC. I heard an Edith Piaf-style chanteuse and a cool accordion player, both very stylish...no rap with boom boxes to be found.
5. While Paris has always led the world in interior art (the Louvre is overwhelmingly better than its competitors, the Gare d'Orsay a spectacular re-use of an old rail station, now for 19th C art), it is now developing high quality outdoor modern sculpture. La Defense, the 1.5 mile cluster of modern skyscrapers outside the Paris inner ring that houses 25,000 or so workers, has a nice central axis for sitting and conversing, with fountains and art by Picasso and Dali, among others. La Defense keeps the growing modern business cluster out of a Paris that still feels like 1900, but makes the cluster itself a stylish and pleasant place to work.
6. The rise of ingredient-focused multi-ethnic California cuisine has created a clear split in my palatal expectations. I loved my multi-course lunch at Michelin 3 star Pierre Gagnaire near the Arc de Triomphe, but the result is a more understated, refined, and visually intricate experience, without the explosions of seasoning and flavor that one sees at high end US places such as NYC's Gotham Bar and Grill and Berkeley's Chez Panisse. It's like the difference between a harpsichord and an orchestra concert. You have to adjust your senses to the difference, and both can be wonderful.
7. The French are still the masters of beautiful style over substance. Where else would the tallest structure that limits the size of every other building in the city (the Tour d'Eiffel) have absolutely no function other than to look nice?
Opera: Antonio Salieri Les Horaces (1786) at the Royal Opera, Versailles
Seeing a classical opera in a hall where Louis XVI would have seen similar fare in 1786, just before the revolution, was intriguing. The first violins fiddled while Rome burned, if you will. The small opera house is dazzling in architecture and ornamentation, but converts music listening to an activity of elite privilege (well, I guess it still is at the Met in NYC!). Salieri (1750-1826) was born about the same time as Mozart, but outlived him by 35 years. He was perhaps the most renowned composer of his time, the favorite of courts from Italy to Paris, and financially successful as Mozart was not. He composed for the French court, and skedaddled to Vienna just before the revolution. He's mostly known to Americans as the foil to the brilliant-but-juvenile Mozart in the film Amadeus, where he was portrayed as a jealous mediocrity who knows just how mediocre he is. The film aside, there's little real evidence that he was a bitter, jealous antagonist of Mozart. After all, success often breeds contentment (Donald Trump aside). On the other hand, Mozart was certainly bitter about Salieri's relative monopoly on royal commissions. What is certain is that Salieri's music, while lying easy on the ear to the nobility of 1780, seems pretty bland now. Classical-period music with pedestrian melody and lack of dynamic contrasts is pretty weak tea. It's easier to appreciate grade B baroque and romantic composers than those of the classical period, perhaps explaining why little classical literature besides Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven gets performed much now. Salieri's Les Horaces, about warfare in ancient Rome, was pretty dull. The music was well sung and generally well played by a period instruments ensemble, whose winds sometimes lacked the precision I am used to in New York and Berkeley. It was cool seeing the same subject in the Louvre a couple days later, here in a painting by Jacques-Louis David:
Opera: Tosca at the Paris National Opera
These days you cannot see opera at the wonderful 1875 Palais Garnier, now limited to ballet. The opera has moved to the Opera Bastille, an uninspired 1989 building designed to "blend into" the surrounding Plaza Bastille, itself not among the great places of Paris. At minimum I expected to see some cool outlandish French art there, but the lobby areas were limited in size, with only one very ugly statue of a blue steatopygian (right) as the sole decor. Oddly, I had not seen Puccini's Tosca live for 20 or more years. The Tuesday performance was pretty good, but reminded me of why I enjoy this opera more from recordings of the past (e.g. Maria Callas). Tosca, a melodrama about an actress who sacrifices all for her condemned lover while pursued by the Trumpian power-lech Barone Scarpia, has a very effective libretto and needs terrific singing actors with voices that can carry over the big Puccini orchestra. Its hard to find a cast up to these demands. Tuesday night both the Scarpia of Bryn Terfel and the Tosca of Liudmyla Monastyrska were impressive musically and vocally, with often thrilling fortes and subtle dynamic contrasts. The acting was just so-so, but was not helped by an ineffective setting and direction featuring an enormous brown wooden crucifix hovering over/under each act. In Act 1 singers walked and processed around on it making the whole stage dark brown (the libretto specifies the interior of a baroque Roman church), and in acts 2-3 it hovered above. This kind of "concept" that dominates the staging drives me crazy when it adds nothing of value to the experience. Tosca the actress certainly has her Catholicism eating at her, and religion does pervade the opera: Act 1 is set in a church, with the artist painting the Mary Magdalene, and ends with the Te Deum procession; the act 2 murder ends with Tosca placing crosses at the head of the dead Scarpia. But religion is not what the opera is about. It's about a famous actress who balances her art, reputation, religion, and love, and comes down firmly in favor of love as the guiding force of her actions. So the Big Crucifix concept seemed peripheral to me. Added to that were some cheap-looking sets in act 2. Red walls can certainly work to show angst, intensity and death...see Bergman Cries and Whispers...but these looked like they were painted by the high school prop department. Thus, this was a production that failed to support the singers or to add new insight. Miscellaneous Paris notes
1. English is winning, for better or worse. While the Parisians remain reluctant to speak any language but French, the street advertising is approaching 50% English. And, at the opera, the projected supratitles translating the Italian libretto were English on top, French on bottom. Sacre bleu!
2. Why can't we get French quality ingredients in US markets? Go the the Rue des Martyrs near Montmartre and you will find, in three blocks, four fruit/vegetable markets, 3 bakeries, 2 patisseries, and an apparently normal supermarket that serves freshly squeezed no-pulp orange juice out of a magic machine. Starting your day with this kind of breakfast is magnifique.
3. Parisians still smoke too much (esp. the young), but much less than 20 years ago. Interior smoking is out in public places. But how in the world did the interior of the opera house smell like smoke?
4. Subway entertainment is much more to my taste, compared to NYC. I heard an Edith Piaf-style chanteuse and a cool accordion player, both very stylish...no rap with boom boxes to be found.
5. While Paris has always led the world in interior art (the Louvre is overwhelmingly better than its competitors, the Gare d'Orsay a spectacular re-use of an old rail station, now for 19th C art), it is now developing high quality outdoor modern sculpture. La Defense, the 1.5 mile cluster of modern skyscrapers outside the Paris inner ring that houses 25,000 or so workers, has a nice central axis for sitting and conversing, with fountains and art by Picasso and Dali, among others. La Defense keeps the growing modern business cluster out of a Paris that still feels like 1900, but makes the cluster itself a stylish and pleasant place to work.
6. The rise of ingredient-focused multi-ethnic California cuisine has created a clear split in my palatal expectations. I loved my multi-course lunch at Michelin 3 star Pierre Gagnaire near the Arc de Triomphe, but the result is a more understated, refined, and visually intricate experience, without the explosions of seasoning and flavor that one sees at high end US places such as NYC's Gotham Bar and Grill and Berkeley's Chez Panisse. It's like the difference between a harpsichord and an orchestra concert. You have to adjust your senses to the difference, and both can be wonderful.
7. The French are still the masters of beautiful style over substance. Where else would the tallest structure that limits the size of every other building in the city (the Tour d'Eiffel) have absolutely no function other than to look nice?
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