If I haven’t written in a while, it’s because I’m been completely busy. Well, that’s not true, but I’ve certainly been finding ways to occupy my time.
I have 5 CUPA spectacles in a 2 ½ week period, the last one of which is tonight. CUPA spectacles are pretty awesome; at the beginning of the semester, we pick four shows we want to go to out of a list of operas, plays, concerts, and dance shows. But we can also sign up on waitlists for the other shows, which resulted in me ending up with eight different tickets (as of this writing – who knows what the next month holds!). This past Monday was Die Zauberflöte, or the Magic Flute. It was… bizarre, in a word. I expected something very spectacularly operatic, but it was a very pared-down modern version. Instead of the Queen of the Night flying in in a big dress, you didn’t even realize it was her until she started trying to seduce Tamino. In this version, the opera’s Masonic themes were glaringly obvious, never more so than when all 67 singers, clothed in black and wearing opaque veils, stood in a giant circle and chanted as Tamino and Papageno descended into a tomb. And with all of the pomp and circumstance and flying stripped away, you also realize some of the sexism and racism in the opera that you’d never noticed before.
The following night was “Un chapeau de paille d’Italie” at la Commédie Française, which is the story of a man whose horse eats a woman’s hat on his wedding day, and he spends the whole play running around visiting different people to try and find an identical copy of her hat while avoiding letting his betrothed know about it. It was definitely amusing, made more so by the artistic decision to add an electric guitarist and a violinist to the cast and have a good third of the lines in the play be sung along to very modern music. This Monday was another show at la Commédie Française, although this time a tragedy: Andromaque. I will admit to falling asleep for morsels of it, but I also really enjoyed it. The actors were all pretty powerful, especially the actresses playing Andromaque and Hermione. Hermione was without doubt my favorite – I really liked the actress’ portrayal of her. I also liked the actress playing her handmaiden, Cléone; she had a really interesting voice and look, both of which reminded me of Audrey Tautou.
Tonight is “Le Faiseur,” a play by Balzac.
School has been fairly hard, especially last week. Monday was my first major assignment, an exposé for my “Drawings of the 18th century” class. This is a 20-25 minute presentation on the artist we were assigned, inclusive of an artistic analysis of his work and career across one particular piece of his art. I was given Pieter Boel, and so spent all weekend finalizing my presentation on his ostrich sketches and paintings. I was nervous, and so worried about messing up grammar or forgetting important technical vocabulary that I ended up pretty much reading my entire presentation straight from the document I’d typed up, except for when I was pointing something out on my powerpoint. My presentation was also too short, but overall I’m pretty happy with how it went.
A Pieter Boel sketch of ostrich legs
Thursday night was my France of Louis XIV TD. I was expecting a slow class, since it was only expected to be 45 minutes long – but just the opposite! The student who was supposed to give the oral commentary sent our professor an e-mail right before class saying that they weren’t going to show up. So our professor dealt with it by having us write a commentary on the assigned text in the 45 minutes of classtime instead. I was so unprepared for this. The last commentary I wrote in French was on the French A1 IB exam, almost three years ago. In fact, I think that may have been the last commentary I wrote in any language. So to say I’m rusty is a bit of an understatement. Still, it probably went okay; I’m just going to have to wait to find out. Tomorrow is another written assignment for the same class, a dissertation-type piece, but while I’m not looking forward to it at least we’re expecting this one!
My demi-pointes for dance class!
My dance class is a lot of fun. I’m taking classical dance at the Centre de Danse du Marais, and I go there 2-3 times each week. I had my 8th class yesterday (my 5th of full classical dance – the others are Barre au Sol classes that work on classical dance exercises on the floor) and I feel like I’m definitely getting a lot better. My teacher even said so after class yesterday! Up until yesterday I was the newest student, but when two newer students joined I could finally see how much I have improved.
Tuesday was made even better by going out to a lovely lunch with another CUPA student after dance class and having a wonderful conversation completely in French.
Tagliatelle carbonara and white wine
I also went shopping on Friday because Yves Rocher was having a 50% off sale, so now I’m fully stocked up on a variety of very French skin products, which I’m excited to try out. After all the walking I did this weekend (an update on that coming up soon!), the foot scrub is definitely my current favorite.
À bientôt!
P.S. “Le Faiseur” was fantastic! I loved the play, the ABBA music they inserted, and the actors, but the set was my absolute favorite. It was a three-piece moving set, with doors and trapdoors and parts that flipped up to become doorways. The set also changed to various levels of steepness to reflect events in the play, leaving the actors to loom over each other or slip down the inclines in different scenes.
Nouvelles Connaissances 