TRAVEL/CULTURE: London - Paris on Eurostar

Easyweasy - dirty windows to Paris and clean on the way back - WHY?
Invited to Puccini's glorious Tosca, Rome, 1800.
Martina Serafin - Tosca
Marcelo Alvarez - Cavaradossi 
Ludovic Tézier - Scarpa 
The Conductor - Daniel Oren (the longest arms I have ever seen)

Directed by Pierre Audi, who describes himself as an 'outsider' and like many of that ilk he is very versatile, talented and idiosyncratic. Artistic Director of the Dutch National Opera, he founded and made the Almeida Theatre, the foremost avant garde theatre in London, a benchmark for excellence. 

A Napoleonic Tosca with some spectacular 'coups de théâtres', an emphasis on faith, crosses, and a bevy of golden cardinals - an arresting and memorable production at the ugliest opera house in Europe, the Opera Bastille - you are warned not to have seats in the first seven rows as the acoustics are so bad - the lighting is appalling, the circulation worse. 

Jean-Honoré Fragonard Les Curieuses 1767-1771

Paris in the doldrums - an exodus to London (France's largest city after Lyon), and Brussels. The economy had, a President much despised - this beautiful city is a heartbreak. Maybe the new Bernard Arnault/Louis Vuitton Museum (a glass nod to the Grand & Petit Palais - Frank Gehry the architect of the moment has never matched his Guggenheim Bilbao building) will make a difference and Patrick Modiano did get the Nobel Prize - deserved?
Nevertheless at the Musée d'Orsay an exhibition to startle and make you think SADE Attaquer le soleil.
Sade - 1740-1814.

Carl Schleich Pièce acrobatique

• Emprisonné sous trois régimes 

•  Il demeura toute sa vie un esprit libre

•  Son oeuvre reste interdite jusqu'en 1958

• Il est le moraliste de l'immoralité

• Il disloque le corps à l'extrème 

• Il condamne Dieu à Mort 

Fin du XVIIIe Siècle La Révolution Libère les pulsions destructrices. 

Voir, c'est croire; mais sentir, c'est être sûr! 

Jean-Jacques Lequeu Autoportrait 1786

Man Ray Monument à DAF de Sade 1933 

Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres

Anonyme Le Serment d'amour

Francisco de Goya L'exécution