Fve questions from shezan

[chickenfeet]

1. So how did you end up at Lycée Saint Jean de Béthune in Versailles?

It was an exchange thing at school. Not a very positive experience!

2. Why Canada?

Initially it was a short term intra company transfer. I liked it and stayed.

3. How did you become an expert kitten raiser?

lemur_catta is the expert. I am but her humble assistant.

4. What was the most memorable musical performance (or opera) you ever saw?

Peter Grimes at the Garden c. 1983? Jon Vickers as Grimes. Geraint Evans in his farewell appearance as Balstrode.

5. Furtwangler or Toscanini?

Neither loom large in my personal musical experience. I suspect Furtwangler would be more to my taste.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Ohoho! Can one follow-up? Why a bad experience?

My sentiments on Toscanini echo Furtwangler's, who walked out of one concert (forget which, alas) grumbling "Bloody metronome!"

Jon Vickers as Grimes must have been heavenly. I saw him at the Paris Opera around 1976 (the Rolf Lieberman days) in Otello. His understudy was Placido Domingo, and I remember my group of friends grumbling because when we went a second time (at the 10-franc seats on the fifth floor, visibilité réduite but blissful acoustics because it was still at Palais Garnier) becaue we wouldn't get to see Vickers again. The conductor was one of those safe Italians, not Tullio Serafin, but that sort. Margaret Price was Desdemona.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Ohoho! Can one follow-up? Why a bad experience?

Well as I think you know I am a scholarship boy barely two generations removed from the slums. Being 'exchanged' with a wealthy Catholic Breton naval family (father a commodore, grandfather an admiral with the FFL) with a chateau near Brest was a bit out of the league of the grandson of 56214 Sapper Evenson, 19th Divisional Signal Co., RE. It was almost bizarre. They had an apartment on the Rue de Marechal Galieni in Verailles where the aged aunts (all dressed in deepest black) would gather for le gouter. I survived by withdrawing as far as possible and reading my way through the memoirs of general Marbot. It was all a bit hard on a twelve year old.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Oh, my sainted aunt, Versailles was really giving you the full, wall-to-wall, nine-course-dinner treatement! You know about the "Versaillais", of course - lives on to this day. Hordes of Tala (as in "Ils vont-t'à la messe") children in navy blue, herded by spinsters to the Matinées Classiques at Théâtre Montansier, etc. (My parents lived in Le Vésinet for a while. Unsurprisingly, I turned Trotskyite there.) Did the Breton naval family have children your age? And they must have been rather good people, as a mater of fact, because not many people in La Royale (affectionate nickname for the French Navy to this day) had forgiven Mers-el-Kébir; so FFL Navy officers deserve respect...

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

There was of course a son, my age. His main interest in life was shooting small birds and stuffing them. Grandpere may have been FFL but grandmere had never forgiven the Americans for shelling her chateau.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

May I just say that you have had one of the most interesting lives of any of my acquaintance?

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

*smug* Geraint Evans once sang in our front room. And at a Boat Race party I stood on Flash Harry's toe.