Ballet? Really?

As it so happens, yes. EDUCO bought everyone tickets to see a ballet at Versailles, quite fittingly, Marie-Antoinette. Around 6:00, at the Place Saint-Michel station, I boarded the train headed southwest for Versailles. It was dark out by this time, and I read Le Roi-Machine on the long ride; when I arrived at the terminal, I quickly found my way to the palace, and found a modest train of mostly elderly people headed in the same direction. The palace was shining with light (see FB for a photo), and, more importantly, warmer than outdoors.

Under my hoodie (which I checked, along with my backpack), I was wearing my nicest short-sleeve white button-down, the pair of shorts without the hole (just like the day before), and sneakers. I'm a student, and can get away with this kind of dress, but the real clientele were, of course, wearing much finer clothes. I had about a half-hour of waiting in the corridor, where rich people were eating and drinking overpriced food and alcohol. I took the advantage to rediscover the gallery of statues, which everyone else was ignoring. Eventually, I found a nook not far from Charles the Reckless, the 15th-century Duke of Burgundy, and continued my reading. Eventually, we were ushered into the theater.

I had lousy seating; there's no other way to describe it. Fourth floor balcony, on the edge, in the back row. In the gap between a pillar and a family of Japanese (?) tourists, I could see about 60-70% of the stage.

This was my first ballet, and I didn't really know what to expect. I was surprised at the dancers' skill and agility, and I know that my Mom would have enjoyed the costumes. In the first half of the show, Marie-Antoinette first appears at Vienna, and then is married to a certain Louis. Everyone at the French court was wearing masks -- a way of showing deceitfulness and spite, maybe? M-A was deeply hated as a foreigner by the rest of the court, even if good old Ben Franklin thought she was beautiful and elegant (no, there was no BF cameo, much to my disappointment). Louis cheated on her, she got upset, decided to leave him, wrote a letter, but then he hugged her and the intermission began. I spotted one other person from EDUCO, but I was pretty much alone: students had the option of attending one of 3 different performances, and mine was the least popular. So, I found a bench and pulled out my book, which was rather good.

After the intermission, the Revolution began. No, I mean it: definitely the best music was the Revolutionary theme, fast, frantic, and violent. In the midst of crowd of black-jacketed men, one dancer, wearing a brilliantly scarlet coat, led the rest, bearing his bare chest. Not Mirabeau, not Lafayette; Robespierre perhaps? A sort of undifferentiated Spirit of the Revolution? You tell me. In any case, he was pretty cool, as was the carrying offstage of scantily-clad noblemen by the men in black jackets. M-A languished in prison, met someone else, but, in the end, got carried, reluctant and struggling, into the red spotlight, where the executioner, in black leather (same dancer as the red-coated guy) tilted her head back. The performance ended with a thud.

So, the Revolution guy gets made props, as do the man and woman who represented the passage of time. I left with mixed feelings: definitely a night well spent, but I think I could have thought of better ways to spend it. I walked back into my dorm around midnight. Thank goodness I had no classes the next day!

~JD

"La depense la plus frequent est consacree au vin, car les fetes sont nombreuses... tout est pretexte pour boire" [The expense the most frequent - among students in medieval Europe - was dedicated to wine, for parties were numerous. Everything was a pretext for drinking] (Jean Verdon, Voyager au Moyen Age, p. 193).

Chateau de Versailles (Interior)

Versailles is a baroque monster crouching in a garden.

But let me explain; two weeks ago, I, with three other Americans, took a train out of Paris, for the artificial town of Versailles. Why do I call it artificial? Because the town was plopped down on the countryside when Louis XIV decided that he wanted a new palace, in order to better contain his nobles. Perhaps I exaggerate, but Louis was, in my opinion, both a megalomaniac and an egomaniac, and one of his greatest talents was his creativity in finding ways to remind the rest of the world that he, the Sun King, was at the center of the solar system.
After we passed security, and assured our free admission thanks to our student IDs, the girls and I split up (it was around 11:00 by this point). Ilana and Emily wanted to eat crepes in the gardens, and enter the chateau when the crowds had thinned; I wanted to enter the chateau immediately, so that I could guarantee that I had absorbed the whole interior before I relaxed in the gardens. Alice opted to go with the others, and so we went our separate ways.

And here, unfortunately, is where the detail ends. I became so quickly overwhelmed with the rest of my work that I never took the trouble to "write up" my travel experience while the matters were still fresh in my mind! Although I did take notes (as I usually do), most of the information can be found in the captions of my FB photos. So why repeat everything? Just enjoy the photos as they are; that should be visual tour enough of the triumph Louis XIV.

However, there's one thematic point that I'd like to get across. I left the chateau shortly after 6:00, and arrived back in my dorm at around 9:00 -- in other words, I had spent 12 hours of my day on this visit. I visited every room open to the public in the castle proper, and also hiked, circumventing the garden, to the Trianon and the Petit Trianon, where I likewise visited every room (I never made it to the Jeu de Paume, unfortunately). I never had time to visit the gardens.

And the astonishing thing is, that the girls ended up spending the whole day in the gardens, and didn't stop to enter the chateau proper until after it had closed! This, then, is the point: Versailles is simply so massive, that it cannot be visited in a single day, no matter how determined the tourist (and I assure you that I am very determined).

As for today, it's Toussaint, and the rain ruined my plans to visit the Cluny Museum. Maybe on the weekend...

~JD

"A la mort de Jean II, en 1479, il faut parler d'Espagne: son fils Ferdinand qui a epouse en 1471 Isabelle de Castille lui succede en Aragon; le couple se fait accepter en Castille" [After the death of Juan II, in 1479, one must begin to speak of 'Spain': Juan's son Ferdinand, who in 1471 had married Isabelle of Castille, succeeded him in Aragon; the royal couple made itself recognized in Castille] (Jean-Philippe Genet, Le Monde au Moyen Age, p. 231).