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Saturday
night we were invited to see k.d. lang perform with
the Brooklyn Philharmonic at Carnegie
Hall. I’ve
see Ms. lang only once before and that was on television, years ago,
when she say Roy Orbison’s “Crying” which
made a lasting impression.
Saturday night she gave us an hour of her brilliance, and it was
stunning. She is the North American chanteuse, the 21st-century Piaf.
I can’t remember seeing a singer with the vocal power and control
who compares with her. Judy Garland performed on
that stage forty-three years ago and turned the house upside down.
My hosts on Saturday
night were there for that one too. k.d. lang did it again Saturday
night. She had the audience in her hand for every moment, and in
the end they were on their feet banging on their seats for more.
There is nobody like her, and what a thrill it was to see and hear. |
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The
Board of Directors and helping hands of The American Friends
of Versailles thank the craftsmen and artisans of the Trois
Fontaines Bosquet
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Last
of Versailles coverage. Most of our last full
day in France last week was spent at Versailles where the
American
Friends had organized private tours of the chateau, followed
by a special dedication to the Trois Fontaines Bosquet’s
craftsmen and artisans and then a Dejeuner sur l’Herbe in
the garden of the Petit Trianon.
We got to the dedication and a brief tour of the Petit Trianon, after which Barbara
de Portago took us on a tour of Marie-Antoinette’s
Hamlet (or le Hameau). |
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Pierre
Arizzoli-Clementel and Olivier, Vicomte de Rohan
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Guy
de Laporte and Dorothy Cherry
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Ann
and Bill Wachtler
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L.
to r.: The craftsmen and artisans who restored
Trois Fontaines Bosquet;
Barbara de Portago and DPC.
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Pierre
Arizzoli-Clementel,
David and Catharine Hamilton, Madame Albanel, and Pierre-Andre
Lablaude reflected in the Trois Fontaines Bosquet
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Sara
Sue Kataoka and Jula Mouroufas |
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Trois
Fontaines Bosquet
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Olivier,
Vicomte de Rohan
and Jeffrey Hirsch |
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A
bust of Marie-Antoinette at Petit Trianon
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The
Petite Trianon was commissioned by Louis XV in 1761 as
a place where he could live amidst botanical gardens and hothouses
he personally
supervised. Completed in1768, it soon
became the favorite place of rendezvous for the King with his last
mistress Madame du Barry. It was while staying
there in 1774 with du Barry that he first contracted the smallpox
that killed him a few months later.
When Louis XVI succeeded his grandfather, he gave the Trianon to his wife Marie-Antoinette
as her very own — a place where she could get away from the stifling etiquette
of court life. She “re-did” the place, replacing the botanical garden
with an “English” garden, re-landscaping the grounds, re-decorated
the
rooms, and had a small theatre built for plays in which she acted with other
members
of
the
court
as
well as staff, playing to a select audience of friends.
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In
the garden of the Petit Trianon for Dejeuner
sur l’Herbe
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While the palace
and gardens of Versailles was open to the public in those days,
the Petit Trianon was private and open only to those the Queen invited. This
more
than
annoyed the many who were not invited, including the many wags she was looking
to escape from. She liked going there with only a friend or two and spending
the night, giving rise to rumors about her activities which of course on elaboration
became “depraved
acts.” What really was going on was simply a fantasy life free of the oppressive
political pressures of the court.
Eventually,
in 1783, Marie-Antoinette’s interests
at the Petit Trianon turned to the building of le Hameau which
was an even more
extravagant fantasy comparable to owning a private Disneyland today.
It was the time of the emerging popularity of Rousseau and the concept
of going back to nature, and the young queen was very much a woman
of her time.
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Catharine
Hamilton and friend
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Le Hameau was
a little “village” constructed on some
farmland on the other side of the lake from the Trianon. The idea
was inspired by one owned by the Prince de Conde at
his chateau in Chantilly. These constructions were not uncommon.
The king’s
cousin, the Duc d’Orleans, had a similar project
at Raincy as did his sister-in-law, the Comtesse de Provence at
Montreuil.
Antoinette’s village was designed by her architect, Mique,
and consisted of eight remodeled cottages, a cow barn, stables, a
dairy, paddocks,
a chicken-run with nesting boxes, and it was stocked with sheep,
goats, Swiss cows and 68 hens. She planted fruit trees and bushes
including 200 apricot trees, 100 gooseberry bushes, 100 raspberry
bushes and 800 strawberry plants. (Many of the trees, more than two
centuries old, were destroyed in the great gales of 2002). There
was a mainhouse which was hers although it was used only for luncheons
and playing games such as billiards and cards (there was great gambling
in the court of Versailles). |
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The
French Pavilion |
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R.
Couri Hay and Lydia Hearst
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For the Queen, it was a diversion, an amusement, to
which she devoted a great deal of time planning and decorating.
The Barn (which was
destroyed during the First Empire along with the Preparation Dairy)
was used as a ballroom. Her “house” and the cottages
for example had more than 1000 white porcelain pots for flowering
plants, made by Sevres, with her monogram in blue to ornament the
windowsills and staircases. Jasmine, roses and myrtle were everywhere,
as well as lilacs although it was also a working farm that actually
produced a small income.
She visited le Hameau a little more than 200 times over a period
of six years. Her visits there, like those to the Trianon took
on a life of their own to the rumormongers, giddily imagining debaucheries
that were based more on the fantasies of those spreading the rumors
than on the behavior of the queen which was in many ways child-like
and naïve. |
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L.
to r.: Petit Trianon from the back; The rose arbor.
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About
a century ago two Englishwomen visiting Versailles claimed
to have experienced Marie-Antoinette’s ghost at le Hameau
and wrote a bestselling book about it. On our tour last week, we
were
shown around by a woman staff member who has read everything ever
written about Marie-Antoinette. I asked her if she’d ever seen
the queen’s ghost. She said that while she hadn’t, she
knew others who have claimed to several times — but mainly
in the theatre of the Petit Trianon. She also believes that one day
she
too will see the ghost of the queen. |
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Le
Hameau.
Marie-Antoinette's cottage in the center. |
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Meanwhile,
le Hameau feels like a ghost-town, albeit a rather
sad and gentle, pastoral one. In one corner on the the edge
of the lake near a small footbridge, the surface of the water
was solid with hundreds of carp open-mouthed as if begging to
be fed. Our guide told us that Marie-Antoinette had included
in the annual budget six
hundred pounds of bread to feed the fish. The guide then went
into her cottage and came out with a stale baguette for us to
feed to the Queen’s piscine throng.
The Bourbon kings ruled France for centuries and Versailles was built more than
a hundred fifty years before Marie Antoinette arrived there, a political pawn
sent by Austria seeking imperial alliances. She was there for not quite nineteen
years when she was taken, along with her husband, to Paris where she was imprisoned,
humiliated and abused and finally in 1792 beheaded by the mobs, as payment exacted
for any and maybe all the injustices of the dynasty. Le Hameau, like the fish
in its lake, feels like it's awaiting her return. Waiting in vain. |
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L.
& r.: The stables stocked with sheeps,
goats, Swiss cows, and hens.
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L.
& r.: The
barn at le Hameau. |
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L.
to r.: DPC looking across the lake at Marie-Antoinette's
cottage.
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The
lake stocked with carp
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The
Marlborough Tower |
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The
staircase to
Marie-Antoinette's cottage |
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The
ballroom
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One
of the cottages at le Hameau |
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Our
guide with Barbara de Portago in Marie-Antoinette's billiard
room |
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Children
playing ball in the main courtyard of the Petit Trianon |
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JH
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