Rolando who?

You remember when Joshua Bell played almost unnoticed in one of the Metro stops in Washington DC, and made only $32 for 45 minutes of play? (here is the link to YT)

Rolando Villazon made an extra step and sang a tune from his new CD on a Paris Métro train, in front of the numerous commuters. All that happened last Monday during rush hour... and despite his star-status in Paris, Rolando was completely ignored. Here is proof:



What do you conclude from this?

Ed: Above video contains only 45 sec of full material suppressed from both WAT and DailyMotion portals.

Happy Valentine's day!

It's one of those days when you go to Ladurée to buy a box of Macarons (not macaroons!)...

 

Paris Paris

Everybody knows how I passionately love Paris. By that I mean that I also love criticizing its bad sides, which are many [like in any other big city], but I always find a little corner, a little street, a little bit of history related to any given building or a façade, always something to remind me how blessed I am to be able to thoroughly enjoy this charm and beauty around me...

Last week I managed to visit Musée d'Orsay, one of my favorite places that I'm coming back to as if it was a shrine. It's an old Railway Station, very cleverly restructured  to host the most amazing permanent collection you could ever dream of. The collection is steadily updated and each visit is a new surprise (even if there were no updates I'd go anyway, to admire everything and especially my absolute favorite - Cézanne). This time I noticed a new painting by Pierre Bonnard called "Nu Bleu" [Naked Blue],

but that's not what I wanted to post about. Musée d'Orsay is currently hosting two exhibitions which will close in a week, so if you get a chance to visit Musée d'Orsay, with the same ticket you can visit these two gems too.

Annick Massis au Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (TCE)

photo from the TCE web-site

4 december 2009  Annick Massis - recital 

That night in TCE was supposed to be special as there was a long awaited recital of one of the leading french sopranos, Annick Massis. She is parisienne who, in spite of her fan-base, shows up very seldom on any of numerous stages in Paris. Second reason for the night to be special was that it was a rare occasion to listen to the belcanto-repertoire in Paris, which is kinda weird since Paris counts quite many belcanto-freaks. On the less appealing side, the announced program was short and uninspiring, which probably explains about 1/5 of the seats being vacant (especially in the 2nd balcony).