A Day at the Opera

It seems only fitting that on the day we are mourning the very much beloved and sorely missed Joan Sutherland I take the opportunity to share some notes from our trip to the Garnier Opera House.

We had a long and fervent walk to the Opera House from our Hotel - there was no good Metro route, we weren't down with the buses at that point, and we sort of underestimated the distance. I slept in a bit more than usual that morning (can't really explain that - the wine? travel catching up with me?) and so we didn't get going as early as we'd have liked, and there was an English Language tour we wanted to make it for, so we really hoofed it to get there. No stopping for croissants, no stopping for cafe: not a recipe for a happy morning couple. But we made it just in time for the tour - only to find a huge long line extending onto the street.

Cory took the French approach and went in through an alternate door to ask for some guidance; which we got, advising us to completely blow off the line to get on an interior line for the tours. Where we waited. And waited. The French way of dealing with queues is singular. There's plenty of pushiness, and not much devotion to order; but there's also not really much in the way of hurrying or urgency. Eventually we found out that the English tour was totally sold out and there wouldn't be another one until the next day (because of a dance performance taking place that afternoon). So we opted for a self-guided visit to this incredible building and hallowed hall of music.

We did miss something by not having someone take us through it, but the place is gorgeous no matter how you slice it.

We had no access to the orchestra seating area. Only people on tours got to go there. (Stifled shouts of frustration.) But we got to see Chagall's incredible ceiling from a box in the corner.

We made up for some of our bad luck by having the very good luck of seeing the painted faux curtain on the drop when we stopped into the other corner box. It was only down for a couple minutes, and it was very dark, so the image isn't so hot, but it gives you a sense.

The ceiling from the other box. It was truly awe-inspiring.

Notice the details of scenes from operas and ballets. Daphnis et Chloe; The Firebird; etc.

Les Troyens; Castor et Pollux; Swan Lake; Boris Godunov; the Magic Flute; Fidelio; on and on...

Had to get a shot of the Phantom's box (Number 5)

And the obligatory shot of me dancing in a holy place. (No trip is complete without one or two of those.)

This is nothing close to a worthy testament to the memory of La Stupenda, but I'm glad I could put something out there for her today.

Post Production

We pause now so I can give myself a little pat on the back.

I'm getting better at the post-production stuff in the photo department. Can you guys tell which photo in the last series had me pulling out the magic to hide a woman standing behind one of the sculptures? Can you see where she was?

In other news, what the hell is going on with Cincinnati's defense?!?

Musee Rodin (or, Hell is in the Details)

After a most delectable lunch of galettes and cider with Christina and Johnathan at a creperie called Josselin, we went over to the Rodin museum to get our sculpture on.




The weather turned before long.



So we just took that opportunity to go to the indoor part of the museum (converted from the residence where Rodin lived for several years toward the end of his life).

For this next one, I pretended to be shooting a sculpture but got a nice shot of Cory peeking around it

It was a fantastic museum, of course. I wasn't too shutter-happy inside, but when we went back outside, I got drawn into the Gates of Hell pretty deep.

Like Milton and Marlow, Bosch and Goethe and (especially) Dante, Rodin had a special fascination with the infernal, and and it was the subject of some of his best work.

I'm the first to admit that it can damage the experience (and be just plain annoying) to spend one's travels totally focused on taking photographs or shooting video. But by the same token, if you maintain a balance, the camera can help you pay attention to visual elements in a number of ways. I spent a lot of time on this trip engaging with details in some fairly grand works of art and architecture.

You can see the raindrops on the bronze in some of these - it rained pretty hard while we were inside, and it sprinkled on and off when we went back out too.

Rodin worked directly from Dante's Inferno to make this masterpiece, and he incorporated elements of some of his other major sculptures.

It was a pretty wonderful museum experience. This was mid-afternoon on our second day there.

I'll leave you for now with a reminder that the Eiffel Tower should never be interpreted to have any phallic significance whatsoever.

Jardin du Luxembourg

After that amazing dinner Chez Denise, including sharing an incredible ile flottante for dessert (thanks Eevin for turning us on to that particularly French bit of deliciousness, and thank you very friendly French couple at the next table who ordered one so we could see how fabulous it is there!!) we took a little walk down to the pont des arts to... well, if you know Paris well, you may be able to guess what we did on that bridge. If you don't, I'll fill you in on that a few posts from now. For now, suffice to say it was quiet and romantic and lovely.

The next morning, we walked a bit, grabbed a coffee on Rue Monge, breakfast bread at a boulangerie across the street (Cory had a croissant au chocolat, and I had a croissant au beurre) and then headed over to Jardin du Luxembourg. A fairly beautiful early autumn day (it was rather cold for much of our time in Paris) and a gorgeous garden.

The apiary where they make honey that they sell on weekends

A flower show happened to be going on while we were there.

This one came when we were back out on the street, naturally. There was more graffiti in Paris than I'd thought there'd be - most of it a ways out of the historic part of the city. So this was a little rare for being right in the thick of things, and nearly singular for being in English.

Later that day...

...we had a walk around the Latin Quarter and the 5th Arrondissement in general. It was chilly in Paris while we were there, and we had some rain to contend with part of the time, but this was a very nice afternoon. The strike was subsiding by the time we left the hotel, and we strolled up to some nice boulangeries and had some much-needed coffee. Among other things, we saw the Pantheon (from the outside)





and an outdoor market



and I insisted we take a peek at an experimental theater.



A reading at Shakespeare and Company that night tapped my inner James Joyce and the steak and wine we had at Chez Denise brought out my Hemingway and Henry Miller (though they were not the ones who graced the walls there. For whatever reason, the American who got a portrait up on their wall - at least the wall we could see from our table - was Norman Mailer. Who knew?)


At Shakes & Co., Adam Haslett and Nick Flynn read from their new books to a packed house that spilled out onto the sidewalk outside. Afterward, there was jazz in the library upstairs, but we were too tired and hungry to make that scene.

Vive la France

We got back from Paris a couple days ago. As cities go, Paris was, you know, ok.

I am lying my ass off, of course. It is amazing. As beautiful as you imagine it is going to be, and with a bunch that you couldn't have imagined.

For those of you who kept track of international events while we were gone, the Mick & Cory-specific headlines are:


We were not involved in the bomb threat at the Eiffel Tower, although we were at the Eiffel Tower the day before. Whew!

We were indeed involved with the Transit Strike/national protest of the proposal to raise the French retirement age to 62. These days French strikes would appear to be more for show than for real shut-down, but the fervor and popular involvement is impressive. [As election day approaches staggeringly quickly, I crave some of this passion here in les Etats-Unis. Seriously. Please do not consider not voting this November. And maybe do a little more than vote. Don't make me start whipping out the reasons why it's important not to cave to racist, hate-filled fear mongers.] What this meant to us was that we had to do some extra work getting from the airport to our hotel in the Latin Quarter. We'd done some advance homework, so were fairly prepared - made a train transfer that wouldn't have been needed on a non-strike day, which sent us to a different station that was a little farther away. And when we approached the location of our hotel, we saw a mass of people up on Boulvevard St. Michel. Like - a BIG mass of people. It soon became clear that the demonstration going on pretty much surrounded the place we were staying. We had a perplexed-tourist moment, noses in the map, trying to figure out how to get around it, when a very friendly student asked us (in English, no less) if we needed help. I said, something to the effect of "well, we need to get to Rue Sommerard, and we're trying to figure out how to get around the demo," and her smiling response was "just go through it." So we did. I have yet to go through most of the photos I took, but here's this shot I snagged with a phone camera of the scene:



Lots more to come...

Zoo Time

As you know, my sister's family moved to Long Island a few weeks ago. Their first visit to the city since that move came a couple weekends ago, when they drove in to celebrate Mary's 11th birthday.

The current vagaries of my life are making it tricky to devote sustained time to creating a post, so for now, enjoy this mini-series, shot by Cory, detailing our side-trip with Anna and Jason to the children's zoo:


Anna trying to feed a llama. He was pretty blasé.


She had a little better luck with a sheep.


The sheep thanking me with a nuzzle to the noggin.


Cory's closeup of a llama.

There was much fun that day. Maybe I'll get to posting more about it later.

But first... I'm off to Paris. Au revoir for a few days!

Saturday afternoon in the wonderful world of TV movies

Maria Conchita Alonso's character:

"You screwed up our marriage with your booze, and pills... and those sleazy hookers."

Michael McKean's character:

"Well your skirts weren't exactly pristine, honey!"

And so it goes.