Wednesday, February 6, 2008

l'enfant et les Sortilèges, et des Champagnes Pommery

These last couple days were filled with an amount of cultural experiences... Last night we dressed up to attend an opera, when we arrived we were surprised to find the opera we were attending was going to be a family event, the brochures say "a voir en famille spectacle". This was nice because it meant it would be shorter than most operas. The opera house was lovely with red seats and a beautiful ceiling with paintings around a window.

The ceiling in the opera house.

The opera itself was about a young boy who basically isn't good at the beginning, he gets upset and throws pillows and trashes the room he is in, even breaking a lamp. Afterwards, the objects come to life to sing and move about the stage pestering him screaming "Il est méchant!" A few of the scenes were very suggestive and displayed blatantly the difference in french culture, with a crowd full of elementary children we sat there watching a couple very sensual scenes... I suppose they don't guard their children as we often do in the states. Well at the end, the "animals" try to punish the child, but accidentally hurt one of their own. As they attack him he cries out "Maman!" The child then saves the "animal" that was hurt and collapses.. The animals wonder what the boy was saying "what does Maman mean? they decide to repeat it.. so there is this chorus of "Maman!" from the animals.. the mother comes and the animals say that he is now good :) The end!


The other cultural experience that we had was this morning was a champagne tour. We all went on a champagne tour at Pommery, it was beautiful looking at all these old chalk murals on the walls. We were down about 3 or 4 floors in the champagne cellar. We even saw one of the bottles from the first year. We were late to the tour because of confusing directions, so we also spent some time looking at the lobby and the artwork there. There was the largest barrel for champagne in the world there that was made for the World Fair in St Louis and could contain up to 100,000 bottles worth of champagne. Amazing!

The stairs leading back up to the lobby at the end of the champagne tour.

2 comments:

  1. Beautiful pictures Sarah. But what were you doing on a Champagne tour? I thought you weren't allowed to drink? Do you have a "what happens in France stays in France" policy? :0P

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  2. Sounds like an interesting opera. :) The photos are beautiful!!! Love you tons.

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