A journal of our visit to Sans Souci and notes on a program of the Four Nations Ensemble in New York City on March 7th, 2002 A day at Sans Souci, Frederick the Great’s favorite home, is immersion in a Rococo world. The gardens cascading below the pavilion (it is neither a palace nor chateau but a Prussian Trianon) are as visually complex as the interior walls are energetic with silver and gold traceries and shell work. The Four Nations Ensemble’s concert (March 7th in New York City) is a program of sonatas from Sans Souci written to fill … [Read more...]

The melancholy that pervades French 18th century art springs from an observation that nothing lasts; nothing fine, happy, exquisite, delicious, amorous, luminous, nothing lasts. Leaving Versailles is leaving Eden and leaving Paris is done with regret. Heaven on earth may well be a moment in which our taste buds are being ravished, our eyes delighted, and all our senses satisfied while seated in a restaurant looking inwards to the belle époque décor and outwards to a river of humanity in promenade on a Haussmann boulevard. My next music … [Read more...]

      It snowed this morning over Versailles and so, just as during my first visit here in 1969, today there is a rare view of the 17th century classical gardens by Andre Le Notre, one of history’s greatest landscape architects. All white, the grounds are an abstract composition in perfectly cut leafless hedges, trees, alleys and statues. The grounds are closed for a second day but the town of Versailles is sparkling in silver sunshine all focused by frigid breezes in the coldest winter in 30 years. There is a … [Read more...]

Saturday, February 5th 230 AM Last week I made a few notes about Ange-Jacques Gabriel, the architect of the opera house at Versailles. Gabriel had mastered one style (the voluptuous Rococo of Louis XV) and created a new one (the opulent classicism of Louis XVI). Towards the end of his career he rejected the sinuous and undulating decorations of the Rococo for fluted columns and the rectangle. Gabriel celebrated the entitlement of aristocracy and his style change was not a political comment, not a revolution in that sense. Had he lived longer … [Read more...]

Saturday, February 4th at 8 PM Traditions and customs differ. In France, at the Opera de Versailles the orchestra is not allowed to enter the pit, to warm up on their instruments, until 5 minutes before the curtain rises. In America we all mosey into our places, run a few scales, play a difficult excerpt, look into the audience for old friends and attractive new faces, and talk to each other as we wait for the lights to dim and the concertmaster to "chorale" us into our group tuning. On opening night at Versailles, the door to the pit opens … [Read more...]

Saturday, February 4, 2012 Of course you remember the Andy Hardy movies, or scenes from The Little Rascals in which a group of energetic, talented (Judy Garland) or bumbling (Alfalfa), amateur performers exclaimed, let’s “Put on a show”. The old barn flashes across their minds and soon the cows are out and the piano is in! While Louis XIV stopped dancing in public on turning 21, and Louis XV was pleased enough with show girls brought to his chambers, Marie Antoinette loved to BE a royal showgirl and did so to the delight of her … [Read more...]

Saturday, February 4, 2012 3 AM Sitting in my hotel room, unable to sleep, and aware that something magnificent has happened for all of the musicians of Opera Lafayette this afternoon. We performers love what we do. We cherish the music we play, written by great geniuses and offering so much wealth for the spirit, so much understanding and meaning to our lives. We love being able to share this with audiences who are often moved, even surprised by the power of the art we recreate. We love the challenge of trying to live up to the potential … [Read more...]

When the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel was given the project of building an opera house for the Palace of Versailles, he accepted with trepidation. The plan for a Royal Opera has been in the minds of the courtiers for almost a century yet circumstances worked to stunt each effort to build it. The price of war more than anything else delayed construction. The wars were never ending. And so, while princes around Europe boasted about their palace theaters, Versailles’ monarchs made do with the makeshift. Temporary theaters were constructed in … [Read more...]

Monday January 23, 2012 We all arrived at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center on the campus of the University of Maryland at 1 PM after a day off, our first in a week. We were all feeling good about our performance at the Kennedy Center and came to the recording session having spent a day visiting museums, shopping, spending time with family and friends, reconnecting with our lives, refreshed. This large theater looks somewhat like an indoor football stadium or a mega church. The roof is so high, enclosing so much vertical space that … [Read more...]