Paris Cultural Events (so far)

November 30th, 2017

Obligatory declaration at this point in the year for everyone on sabbatical or spending a year away:  I can't believe our year is one-third over!  (In fact, I can't.)  

With one-third of our year under our belts, I wanted to reflect on some of the cultural events we have been to during our year, and how language barriers have altered the experiences.  

In Boston, we have settled into some habits in terms of what events we attend.  Some of this is based on conscious decisions, but, just as often, on historical precedent and social reasons.  We see the symphony fairly regularly, rarely see opera or ballet, and go to a lot of theater.  We never go to movies.  I think it is simply because you typically don't buy movie tickets in advance, so they don't hold the same commitment value that, say, theater or symphony tickets do.  

So far this year in Paris, we have been to an opera, two concerts, a musical, and a play.  We have chosen the performances with our language limitations in mind, but they have not all worked out as we predicted.  

I already mentioned the first concert, given by the pianist from Toulouse.  It was fantastic.  We figured, in general, that concerts would be safe and not pose too many language issues.  We went to a second concert a few weeks ago.  It was a benefit hosted by Kate's school, where a few musicians with ties to the school (mostly children who attended, I suppose) performed.  It turns out that French pop music is quite a bit more lyrical than American, with a lot of emphasis placed on the storyline.  We really felt like we were missing an important dimension of the performance.  It made me wonder how much I would appreciate American popular music if I didn't speak English.  In addition, one of the performers was a stand-up comedienne/singer.  With her, we were really in over our heads.  I would say that we pretty much missed all of the humor, even if we understood the broad context.

We also went to "Welcome to Woodstock."  It was a "Mama Mia"-style show with a thin plot built around classic songs from the late 60s played by a live (and quite good) band onstage.  That was great.  We did not understand all of the dialog, but it basically didn't matter at all.  And Glenn and I knew almost all of the songs from our childhoods.  Kate and her friend Roya came, too, and enjoyed the show.  

When Glenn's mother and her friend Ingrid visited in September, they took us to the Paris Opera to see "La Veuve Joyeuse." (It was playing at the very modern Bastille, not the Palais Garnier, the famous opera house.)  The opera was mostly in French, with some German, but with surtitles in English (and perhaps French as well).  It was wonderfully performed and a true joy.  The surtitles made comprehension a breeze.  We enjoyed it tremendously.        

Theater here is a bit of a challenge, but we gave it a try last night.  We walked across the street to the Theatre Odeon to see a production of Chekov's The Three Sisters.  I swear that I saw on the theater's website either that it would be performed in the original Russian with French and English surtitles.  Whatever I read that I earnestly thought was that was not.  It was performed in French with nothing like a surtitle to be found.  (We certainly did not understand everything that was happening on stage, but we can also say with some certainty that the French translation was not entirely faithful to the original Russian, written around 1900.  Our suspicion is based on the number of times phrases like "hashtag," "Kanye West," and "motherf***er" popped up.)  Luckily, we had read the synopsis before going, so we followed roughly what was going on and even got a few of the jokes.  (Update:  My friend Katia, who also attended the play and speaks fluent Russian, French, and English, said that there were a couple of silent performances of The Three Sisters, around the same time, in Russian sign language with English and French surtitles.  That must have been the webpage I originally saw.)   

Even given the language issues, I was glad to have seen it.  It had one of the most beautiful, impressive, and effective sets I have ever seen in a theater production.  The stage was large enough that an entire (small) house was constructed on stage.  It was built in a mid-century modern split-level style with expansive glass walls, so we could see into every room.  There was also a deck off the back and a entry stoop on the front where action took place.  The house was built on a turntable, so as different actions were happening in different parts of the house, it rotated slowly around so that we could see the main action.  At any time, though, the audience could see four or five different scenes, some of them with characters doing or saying things and some without.  

The sound management was also impressive.  There were microphones on all of the actors that were turned up when they were part of the main action and down (but not off) when they weren't.  Also they did some interesting things with the microphones when the doors were opened or closed.

We are looking forward to additional plays at the Odeon (with English surtitles, I hope), a performance of the Seven-Fingered Hand Circus next week, another two operas (La Clemence de Titus and Don Pasquale, both at the Palais Garnier), a concert in Saint Chapelle, and a Ben Folds concert in the spring.