Nick Hammond
Year in Review
Daniel Auteuil proved his acting skills once again in the film Je l’Aimais. On the movie front, 2009 has been a good year. Martin Provost’s biopic Séraphine won many of the French Oscars (the Césars), including best film and … … Read More
L’Enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot
One day, Serge Bromberg, an indefatigable restorer and archivist of historic French films, had the good fortune toOne day, Serge Bromberg, an indefatigable restorer and archivist of historic French films, had the good fortune to find himself stuck in an … Read More
La Bohème
Tama Iveri as Mimi. Photo: Opéra National de Paris/Ch. Leiber As predictions go, few can be as wayward as that of the Italian music critic who, after the first performance of Puccini’s La Bohème, wrote that “this is an opera … Read More
Die Tote Stadt
Paul (Robert Dean Smith) and Marietta (Ricarda Merbeth) in one of Paul’s dreams. Photo: Opéra National de Paris/ Bernd Uhli We all know about the destruction wrought by Hitler and his henchmen on the world of the arts: huge collections … Read More
Un Prophète
For some reason, I can happily sit through six hours of a Wagner opera, but in the cinema, anything over 90 minutes tends to become unbearable. It takes something special to make me want to go to a film that … Read More
Wozzeck
Vincent Le Texier as Wozzeck and Waltraud Meier as Marie. Photo: Opéra National de Paris/S. Mathé At the beginning of last year, I wrote a review for Paris Update of a production of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck at the Opéra Bastille … Read More
The Secret Life of France
Lucy Wadham appropriately chooses to begin her engaging and engrossing book, The Secret Life of France, with a quotation from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part I: “Remember where we are,/In France, among a fickle wavering nation.” Her book is one in … Read More
Am Anfang
Anselm Kiefer’s monumental towers worked well on the enormous stage of the Bastille opera house. Photo: Charles Duprat/Opéra National de Paris Stop the presses! Watching walls being built is the new equivalent of watching paint dry. In Am Anfang (In … Read More
King Roger
The orgy scene becomes a swimming lesson in this production. Photo: Ruth Walz/Opéra National de Paris I must admit to having more than a little emotional investment in the opera King Roger (Król Roger), since Simon Rattle’s recording of the … Read More
Un Cœur Simple
Tragic Félicité
Adapting the great 19th-century novelist Gustave Flaubert for the screen has always been a tricky process. Claude Chabrol’s 1991 version of Madame Bovary, for example, never manages to capture the mordant irony of the original text. And provincial boredom, while … Read More