Last week I travelled to Paris to meet up with Sam who had been working there since 27th December with Baroque ensemble ‘Les Arts Florissants‘ on two pieces: ‘La Descente d’Orphée aux enfers’ (Charpontier) and ‘Venus & Adonis’ (Blow). Having not long returned from Dubai, squeezed in a trip to the country to visit my dog (who has been on her holidays with my friend Susan and her dog Ollie while I was away), celebrated my Dad’s 60th Birthday with a big party, done two days teaching at school and sorted out the whole snowboard debacle, I was nonetheless keen to get off travelling again! It had been two weeks since I’d seen Sam and I was really looking forward to spending some time with him and seeing his show.
I arrived at Cité de la Musique in Paris half way through the second act of the their show there on the Wednesday evening, having travelled across London and Paris with a suitcase and snowboard, ready for my trip ahead. They were streaming live video of the show on tv screens outside the auditorium but I had a ticket for the last night of the production so avoided watching any of the show and waited for them to finish before meeting Sam and the rest of the cast backstage, then heading to a local bar for some drinks and a bite to eat.
I’m glad that I waited to see the last night of the show (and many thanks to Les Arts Florissants for my ticket as I know they were in limited supply). It was in the theatre at the Chateau de Versailles, a truly spectacular building and gardens, and the theatre was a wonderful venue from an audience perspective – apparently the acoustics on stage were not ideal for the singers, but the sound coming into the auditorium was fabulous. The orchestra were onstage too, not in a pit, and the two productions, each around an hour long, were semi-staged. I was pleased that they had put the pieces on in the order they had – La Descente d’Orphée is really rather dark, and Venus & Adonis made for a much lighter second half (despite the ending).
So, another trip made to a place I had not visited before (Versailles) to see Sam performing, and then on to the Alps for a week of snowboarding with my new board & bindings!
