Daily Photo

One of my resolutions when I arrived in Lyon was to take a photo every day so that I'd have a complete record of my year here. Well, give or take a few days/weeks (!) I've pretty much managed that, and I'm sure the days I've taken multiple photos make up for the days I haven't :) Anyway, have just created a separate "daily photo blog" to share a photo a day with everyone. First one's up, so take a look at: http://dailyphotolyon.blogspot.com/

Musique et foot...

Went to support our local team last night ... "Your local team?" I hear you cry, "aren't they the best in France?" Yes, that's right dear readers, I seem to have gone from being a person knowing next to nothing about football, to a supporter of the most impressive football team on offer across the channel: Olympique Lyonnais. So what did I learn about football at last night's match? Well, apart from noting that a lot of people go to see it (35,000 there last night) and that watching football in the snow is cold, what most stood out was the unexpected relationship between football and the performing arts. Now this may just sound like pretentious rubbish, and fair enough, it might well be, but aside from the link between football and theatre (all footballers appearing to be thwarted actors specialising in faking crippling pain, particularly those members of the Bordeaux team who added at least three extra somersaults to every fall, lay on the ground for AGES, pretended to limp round in agony, before being able to run around an entire football pitch at top speed, fit as a fiddle (Oh yes, am already bitter that Lyon lost, I was promised a win: Lyon always wins)), there really was a lot of music at last night's match. People were singing/roaring (not really shouting) for the best part of the match, led by the crazy chanting guy, and getting through at least 10-15 different football chants. I'm sure there's nothing strange about that, but out of the blue, on top of the usual range of football chant "tunes", the Olympique Lyonnais supporters seem to have a whole repertoire based on classical music, in particular Carmen and Dvorak's New World Symphony! And it appears that, although I can't find any mention of classically based football chants on trusty wikipedia (though I did discover that England has a "Chant Laureate", Jonny Hurst. I didn't know that before), I'm not going mad. Today I saw a poster, advertising this, a deal to see OL playing and a concert by the Orchestre National de Lyon
for just TWENTY euros! Bargain! Apparently the scheme's been running for three years already, trying to bring in new audiences for both football matches and orchestral concerts. Be interesting to know if it works, and what people think of the venture, and whether the orchestral programmes last year included Bizet and Dvorak?! Cos, if so, next year's football chants are predicted to be a bit less singable as the upcoming concerts include Debussy's Jeux (not that chantable) and, even less promising for football chant material, music by twenty-first century spectralist composer Marc-André Dalbavie. Could be interesting.

Anyway, with these few thoughts I will now sign off, your newly converted football supporter. Take close note of this post however, as I fear those of you in England may never hear of my new-found like again. I doubt I'd remain alive for long if I admitted I discovered football in France!

IT'S SNOWING!

HURRAH!

Exceedingly good...

Found a recipe for an exeedingly good cake, and promised to share it, so here we are:

Honey Madeira Cake

• 150g (6oz) butter
• 100g (4oz) set honey
• 75g (3oz) caster sugar
• grated rind of 1 lemon
• 3 eggs, size 3, beaten
• 250g (9oz) self-raising flour, sieved

To glaze:

• 45ml (3tbsp) clear honey
• 30ml (2tbsp) chopped almonds, toasted

Pre-heat oven to 180oC, 350oF, Fas Mark 4. Grease and line the base of a 900g (2lb) loaf tin.

Cream the butter with the honey and sugar until pale and fluffy. Mix in the lemon rind then gradually beat in the eggs. Add a little flour to prevent the mixture from curdling. [I also added a secret ingredient ... the juice of 1 small lemon, probably equivalent to half a normal lemon.]

Fold in the remaining flour and transfer the mixture to the prepared tin. Bake for about one hour. Test using a metal skewer inserted into the middle: the skewer should come out clean.

Cool the cake on a wire rack. To glaze, warm the honey and make fine holes in the cake with a skewer. Drizzle over the warm honey and sprinkle with the toasted nuts.

Bon appétit!

Joyeux Anniversaire (x 2)

1. Have already mentioned this one: Happy Birthday Opera.
Le Monde has deciced that as Monteverdi's Orfeo was the first opera still regularly performed today, and because it was written in 1607, we should celebrate 400 years of opera. Ok.

2. A more plausible birthday: yesterday was the 157th joyeux anniversaire of the French composer Ernest Chausson, author of the wonderful Poème for violin and orchestra. Am rather saddened to find out that Chausson died at the age of only 44 when he cycled into a brick wall.

p.s. I was going to have another birthday in this list, but it turned out to be even less plausible than the first one. According to a French music magazine I'm reading, Babar the Elephant is sixty five years old. Thought I'd do some investigating, and it turns out that actually he's 66 years old, which isn't really a special birthday at all, and it's not really his birthday his month either. Shame. Instead, let's say Happy Birthday (for yesterday of course, this post is a day late) to the American composer Walter Piston, who wrote that favoured classic of music students round the world: Harmony.

Clouds and wheels...

Odd light the whole of yesterday, maybe because of the storms?

Le Monde de l'Opera

Yesterday, rather unexpectedly,turned into a bit of an opera day. Not only did I get a fantastic CD of Carmen for 4 euros (Le Monde is celebrating the birth of opera with a weekly series of great opera CDs. Hurrah! Happy Birthday Opera!) but had just been for a walk to Place Bellecour, sauntered around the shops for a while, bought a pair of shoes or two in the sales (oops) and was about to head home whenI was tempted in to a cinema by the words "L'étrangère" (the title), "an American in Paris" and "opera". Turned out to be a lovely film based on Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier with LOTS of glorious, soaring soprano singing and extracts from the opera. Was worth seeing the film just to hear the music really! Basically, the opera (Le Chevalier a la Rose in French) begins with the married Marschallin (she's a woman, just to clarify) is having an affair with a young man, Octavian (which is actually written for a female mezzo), who promptly falls in love with another girl Sophie (when he has to present a silver rose to her). Various operatic twists and turns later, and the Marschallin renounces Octavian, and he lives happily ever after with Sophie. As you might have guessed, the plot of "L'étragère"is based on Hofmannsthal and Strauss's story, even stealing the name "Sophie" for the film's heroine. Sophie (Sarah Pratt, the American in Paris) splits her life between working as a dresser at the opera house, theatre lessons (where she's rehearsing a play of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady) and staring at pictures in the art gallery. Octavian of the opera beomes the mysterious handsome stranger Valentin (Clément Sibony) in the "real" part of the story, the singer of the real film playing Octavian in the opera becomes the Marschallin of the real story, and then just for good measure they've thrown in another love interest, Sophie's drama teacher David. And on top of all that, it's in French...

Muse-ings

Just found a post about "Muse" (hence the awful pun of the title, geddit?) who I went to see with a flatmate last year (Not being quite organised enough to buy tickets in advance we instead had a bit of a flirtation with the "marche noir", managing to extract two tickets at the last minute. And only at 5 euros above the original price. Not bad eh?) Anyway, it was going to be a post about music and muse and bands etc, including (the real point of this post), a link to the myspace page of my brother's band (Oh, yes, I'm that cool, I have a brother in a band!) ... voila!

http://myspace.com/noisebrigademusic

If you want "a fine blend of all kinds of music" (have they been reading coffee packets?) or "have a wish to boogie" this is the band for you. Go listen, they're great! And H hasn't paid me to say that, although if he's reading this, you could pay me, oh say thirty pounds ... (sorry, private joke!)

Good luck to them anyway for their gig tonight.

Bonne Annee!

So a slight hiatus in blogging over Christmas and New Year ... but normal service should now resume. Firstly Bonne Annee to everyone, hope all those resolutions are going well (!) My New Year was lovely, even if weighing sheep, attempting to weigh cows but said cows escaping, followed by eating spaghetti bolognese (probably made from a friend of said cows), and then playing monopoly before creating the strangest list of resolutions ever (including "becoming Lady Franks" and "being a watch" was not what I had expected! (And if you've got to the end of that sentence and understood it, congratulations!) Oh dear, have managed to upload the monopoly picture upside down, but actually I quite like it so it can stay. Call it art.

Anyway, Happy 2007 to everyone and watch this space.