“Les Arts Florissants”

Programming

Les Arts Florissants is first of all a musical piece – and now it has also become a musical company, of international renown – because I’m not making fun of you.

These musicians are world-renowned for their freshness, their creativity and their success: bringing back life and warmth to music that bad people like me would have too quickly thrown into oblivion: baroque music.

The first thing the unfit barbarian realizes – is that they are not sitting down.
And then that not only are they not sitting, but sometimes they move on stage.
Isn’t that stupid?
But it’s still a bit fundamental when we talk about a show: it’s for the eyes as well as for the ears.
And this company had the intelligence not to forget “our eyes”.

And after this astonishing and pleasant surprise, the spectator has the great – very very great – pleasure to see that everyone, musicians and singers, are happy to be on stage.
No serious looks because this is “great music”.
No forced respect a priori
No “am I well enough educated to listen to this?”

And as a result, this pleasure of being there, they communicate it to us.
Resist a flood of smiles, give it a try.
You can resist the first few.
But not to this continuous stream of enchanted and happy faces, who are there to give you the joy they feel.

Honestly, look at this: at one point, it feels like a merry “mess”: Jean-Philippe Rameau, Dance of the Great Pipe of Peace, Peaceful Forests – duets and chorus.

And always so frankly – even if video loses 60% of the pleasure of presence – it allows one fundamental thing: close-ups of the artists’ faces.
So, in order to “seduce the wild boars”, we will need video shots projected on side screens, which will allow everyone to be inundated by the smiles that are the heart and soul of this performance.

The morality of this story is childish: when the artists are immense, when they are there to share their loves, then they manage to share everything, even treasures forgotten, decried and damaged by hundreds of morons who had found there something to make people believe that they were “better than the others”. So much the worse for the morons, and so much the better for this artistic expression.

And since these artists are people who really, really want to share their love (quite improbable for me) of baroque music, they have even developed for years a special festival, “In William Christie’s Gardens“, at the end of August, where they have invented a whole bunch of activities to appeal to young people.

You see, sometimes, France is a beautiful country.

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Featured Image : Les Arts Florissants – Festival : Dans les Jardins de William Christie