Tag Archives: France

Book Club: A Table in the Tarn

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France is probably going to be on my mind a lot during the next year; we’re planning another trip in 2013. That means it will probably be in my blog as well, since I mostly write about what I am thinking about. Not too much space between my thoughts and my fingers, actually. To paraphrase my favorite movie, Under the Tuscan Sun, “It’s my process.”

Given that we’re going to France and I love food, I put my name on the list at the library for what appeared to be a very cool book — A Table in the Tarn: Living, Eating, and Cooking in Rural France. I mean, really? How could this be bad? I read all of Peter Mayle’s books about his experiences living in southern France and reviewed a couple of them here and here. Oliver Murrin’s book looked like it was worth waiting for at the library.

I was right. It was a wonderful book, packed with personal stories of giving up the city life and starting up a bed and breakfast in southern France. It was also packed with recipes; about two-thirds of the book is mouth-watering ideas for fabulous eats. I was drawn to the Roquefort Tart pictured above — the recipe is here at what appears to be a blog on hiatus.

Imagine my surprise when I actually went to find the web site for Manoir de Raynaudes to see if we could stay there. It’s gone. Well, not actually gone, but sold to the highest bidder!

It appears that Oliver Murrin and his partner Peter Steggall went back to their British roots, bought a very old manor in southwestern England’s Somerset Levels, and operate it as a bed and breakfast. I’m pretty sure we’ll stay at Langford Fivehead when we do our southwestern England trip, which will of course include my pilgrimage to Daphne Du Maurier’s Cornwall.

But that’s another set of books and another year of traveling. 🙂

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Opera in 3D and Suspending Disbelief

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My daughter and I got ourselves all excited over seeing the opera Carmen in 3D. We carved out a day when we could get together, convinced her Daddy to go with us (even though he doesn’t much care for opera), and then Daddy and I drove into the city in Sunday afternoon traffic. It was going to be totally awesome.

Image via fullissue.com

First premiered in Paris in 1875, George Bizet’s story gives meaning to the adage, the things we do for love. Free-spirited gypsy Carmen seduces the naive soldier Don Jose, causing him to give up his hometown honey and his promising military career to follow Carmen into the band of smugglers she hangs with. When she moves on to a grander conquest in bullfighter Escamillo, Don Jose murders Carmen. The opera is tragic, yet the masterful writing of Bizet has many comic bits that keep the audience from being buried in melancholy. There’s a reason why it’s considered a masterpiece.

Building on the Metropolitan Opera’s roaring success and sell-out crowds seeing live simulcasts of its operas, this Carmen is the first in a series of operas to be filmed in 3-D, and it was a glorious production. Every song in Carmen is singable and Christine Rice in the title role was seductive and sassy. The problem was I just didn’t like her. I grew up with the film version of Carmen starring Julia Migenes-Johnson and Placido Domingo and I loved it. Although Rice’s version is probably more accurate to reality, Migenes’s Carmen is much softer and it’s more believable that Don Jose would give it all up for her.

Unfortunately, somehow Carmen isn’t aging well with me. It’s not unexpected that my 25 year-old daughter would think Don Jose’s devotion to Carmen was ridiculous. Even on my most obsessive days, I can’t imagine murdering anyone out of jealousy. There’s just not any man or woman worth the consequences. Saving the life of my family members in the face of danger? That I could murder for — maybe. But not for jealousy.

The good news is that Carmen in 3D is spectacular — I flinched when the crowd threw roses at the toreadors. The tavern scene is choreographed ingeniously, complete with acrobats! And if you don’t like what Carmen and Don Jose are saying to each other, you can ignore the English subtitles and just listen to the glorious music in its original French language. Although they aren’t the most fashionable choice, the 3D glasses are wearable and since everyone is in the same boat, it doesn’t make any difference if you look silly.

My internet sources tell me that the term suspending disbelief was originally coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1817 as a means to justify his use of the supernatural in the Lyrical Ballads. Since then, literary scholars and academics have taught us that the temporary acceptance as believable of events or characters that would ordinarily be seen as incredible is an important literary tool.  Suspension of disbelief allows an audience to appreciate works of literature or drama that are exploring unusual ideas.

In the case of Carmen in 3D, I encourage you to suspend disbelief and decide for yourself if Carmen has passed the test of time. Even though I’m not a fan of the jealousy plotline, the production itself is worth the price of admission. And speaking of that, if you were to see this cast at the Royal Opera House in London, you would have to pay as much as  £158. In American dollars, that’s $261.00. If you love opera, you’ll love Carmen in 3D.

31 Days in Europe: A Revisit to France

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In the summer of 2010 we went to France. Before we went, I blogged about all the books I read to prepare me for being in France. Check back in my archives — I was scared of being treated like an ugly American. I was wrong and I loved every minute of our trip. I think it’s worth a revisit to last year’s post for this series!

View from the top of Basilique de Sacre Coeur

This post  linked up with hundreds of other 31 Day-ers. Join the fun and visit other bloggers as they share a piece of themselves. Today I’m number 568, by the way.

The Irony of the Lady at the Piano

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Readers, beware! This post is one of those where I can’t help but teach some art and architecture history. If you really hate that stuff, just look at the pictures. I’ll understand and won’t fault you for it.

My conversation with my mother and my niece about the Impressionist copies that I grew up with prompted me to find out if the original of Lady at the Piano (1875) by Pierre Auguste Renoir was  in the Musée d’Orsay where I could visit it this summer.

I have been wanting to visit the Musée d’Orsay for at least twelve years, ever since my daughter came back from her Grandtravel trip to Paris and couldn’t stop talking about the museum’s glories.

It’s such a romantic old-world story. The museum sits in the center of Paris on the banks of the Seine, opposite the Tuileries Gardens, and was the site of royal promenades, a boat dock, cavalry barracks and the Palais d’Orsay, a government building that was burned down during the Paris Commune in 1871, along with the entire neighborhood. For thirty years, the ruins of the Palais d’Orsay served as reminders of the horrors of civil war.

The French government gave the land to the railroad company, and the Gare d’Orsay train station and a hotel were built on the site for the Universal Exposition of 1900. Designed in the Art Nouveau style, the Exposition celebrated the achievements of the past century and encouraged new development for the future. The Second Olympic Games were part of the Exposition, and both the Exposition and the Olympics were revolutionary in their inclusion of African American (Exposé nègre) contributions as well as being the first time female athletes participated in the Olympics.

Following the Exposition, the train station became unusable because its platforms were too short and it served a number of other functions. By 1975, the building was threatened with demolition, but it was given landmark designation and a new museum was to be installed in the train station, in which all of the arts from the second half of the 19th century would be represented. As a prime example of Art Nouveau architecture, the building itself could be seen as the first “work of art” in the Musee d’Orsay, which now displays collections of art from the period 1848 to 1914, including an impressive group of Impressionists. Ironically, it took many years for the now iconic Impressionists and Realists to be exhibited in state-sponsored museums. When the museum opened to the public in 1986, a carefully organized acquisitional plan had allowed the museum to gather art from other museums where it had been housed and to also buy and display art from private collectors. In its short history, the museum has been visited by well over 65 million art lovers.

And it doesn’t house the painting I was looking for.

So where is my lady at the piano? She’s right here in Chicago, at the Art Institute, and I don’t have to fly across the Atlantic Ocean to visit her. Isn’t it ironic?

There is no sense in crying over spilt milk — Sophocles

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This post was previously published on November 15, 2009. I’m migrating my old posts over to WordPress. Here’s one for you in case you missed it.

What do you do when a book is comes highly recommended and you read it and wish you had not invested the fifteen dollars in it? Do you question the taste of the recommender? Or do you search for something in yourself that missed the central core of the story? I’ve been struggling with French Milk by Lucy Knisley for weeks.

Okay — so the source of the recommendation was a twenty-something associate at Borders Books and I’m not twenty-something. Perhaps that is the problem, but I usually enjoy the books that my daughter and her friends read. French Milk is the memoir of an Art Institute of Chicago student who spends five weeks in Paris with her mother. They rent a flat, enjoy the culture and food of France, and have a good time getting to know each other as adults. The title refers to the author’s love affair with the full-fat milk that is served in France. Knisley is a cartoon artist, so the story is presented as a graphic diary. She’s creative and witty, and her drawings are beautifully detailed, but I just wished there were more words!

According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer on Amazon.com, French Milk was originally self published and became a word-of-mouth hit that led to mainstream publication with Simon and Schuster. Given the popularity of graphic novels, Knisley hit the big time at the right time. Despite its cartoon format, it is primarily a travel diary. Lucy’s schedule encourages the reader to invest leisurely time in Paris rather than trying to see it all in four days, as I plan to do. I know it’s wrong, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be satisfied with the whirlwind tour of Paris that’s in my agenda this summer.

When I bought French Milk at Borders, I also bought The Hunger Games. The same associate told me that I HAD to buy the sequel as well since I was going to want to read it immediately after finishing Hunger Games. Now I’m worried that the sequel to Hunger Games won’t be worth reading either. I’ve already heard from my friends that it’s not as good as the first book, and I haven’t been clamoring to get it back from the friend I lent it to. I guess the moral to this story is to use my public library first.

Does anyone want to borrow French Milk? I own it.

Postscript to this entry: I lent French Milk to Vanderbilt Wife. You’ll have to ask her for it. I have not read the sequel to Hunger Games yet, but will soon.

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