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01/04/2010Chopin bicentennary: Show revisits composer's French years

Chopin bicentennary: Show revisits composer's French years Step into the two-storey house where Frederic Chopin performed frequently for friends and renowned artists before he passed away in Paris in 1849.

During his 18-year exile in France, Frederic Chopin was a regular visitor to a two-storey house on a quiet street in Paris where the Polish composer often performed for friends and renowned artists.

The house - now a museum but off the beaten path and often missed by tourists -- is hosting one of two exhibitions for the bicentenary of the great 19th century musician in the city where he spent his final years and is buried.

Frederic Chopin, the Blue Note opened early March in the green-shuttered Musee de la Vie Romantique at the foot of Montmartre to mark the anniversary of Chopin's birth, variously given as 22 February and 1 March 1810.

It revisits his life in his father's home country through some 90 paintings, drawings and other works by contemporary greats including Delacroix, Corot, Courbet and Ingres.

The 1843 Pleyel piano Chopin played in France is also on display, along with an 1839 sketch by the musician entitled Man's Head, showing his talent as a portraitist.

AFP PHOTO OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI

The show captures the heady days when Chopin, fellow composers Liszt, Rossini, Berlioz and other luminaries of the Romantic movement including Chopin's companion, feminist and writer George Sand, and friend Eugene Delacroix, gathered for Friday night salons in what was the home of Dutch-born painter Ary Scheffer on Rue Chaptal.

The exhibition's name comes from Sand and Delacroix, who said they heard "colour" when Chopin played his music. It opens with an 1838 Chopin portrait by Delacroix on loan from the Louvre.

Though browns dominate, "the blue note resonates," Sand once wrote, saying the painting had the same "azure of the transparent night" as the preludes, nocturnes and polonaises Chopin wrote for piano.

"When the idea was proposed two years ago to organise an exhibition in honour of Chopin's bicentenary, we decided to explore the relationship between his music and painting, stressing the 'blue note' that George Sand and Delacroix said they heard in his musical works," said curator Jerome Godeau.

"This 'blue note' is like a reverberation of Chopin's inner world, a poetic world, torn by exile and suffering for his motherland," said Godeau, describing the composer as "a dandy, delicate and torn, one whom, as Sand said, the shadow of a rose petal could hurt."

AFP PHOTO OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI

While the musical world has dedicated the year 2010 to Chopin's music, notably in Warsaw near where he was born, the two Paris shows focus on his time in France.

Chopin left Poland in 1830 at age 20, just before a Polish revolt that was suppressed by imperial Russia. He arrived in France a year later and died in Paris 1849 at 39, apparently from tuberculosis. His body is buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery though his heart, at his request, was sent back home.

One painting, Le Boulevard Poissonniere by Isidore Dagnan shows his first Paris residence, while another Delacroix work, George Sand's Garden at Nohant on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts the bucolic estate where the at times turbulent lovers spent summers. The exhibition runs though 11 July (ww.vie-romantique.paris.fr).

Paris' Cite de la Musique cultural centre will also host a multi-media exhibition entitled Chopin in Paris, the Composer's Workshop from 9 March to 6 June, exploring the evolution of his work and his preference for the intimacy of salons and small venues rather than huge public concerts (www.cite-musique.fr).

AFP / Ana Maria Echeverria / Expatica


1 reaction to this article

joy posted: 2010-04-01 23:56:09

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1 reaction to this article

joy posted: 2010-04-01 23:56:09

Hello dear new friend,
how are you today i hope that every things is ok with you as is my pleasure to contact you after viewing your profile which really interest me in having communication with you if you will have the desire with me so that we can get to know each other better and see what happened in future.
i will be very happy if you can write me through my email for easiest communication and to know all about each other,here is my email (joy.william755@yahoo.fr) i will be waiting to hear from you as i wish you all the best for your day.
yours new friend
Joy

Add a comment
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