PARIS LETTER
107
performances of the thumpingest official German music: largely Beethoven,
Strauss, Brahms, etc., with a super-slick rep.ditioo of Debussy's
La
Mer,
etc.
to show no hard feelings-which, for those who like Toscanini-ism, was
presumably enjoyable. Meanwhile ·the semi-refugee Herman Scherchen was
offering at the Salle Gaveau, with highest priced seats at 40 francs, the most
remarkable programmes of Lully, Mozart, Bach, and particularly Purcell.
The more light-minded derived immense amusement from the way the
concerts were used by the musical public to "show the winning colors"–
the Furtwingler series being ostentatiously attended by all ranking duchesses
and the fancier fascists, firmly determined to enjoy it if it killed them; the
Scherchen series similarly rallying a belligerently liberal musical united front.
The more serious-minded, noting that the liberals had far the best of it
programmatically,
drew
interesting conclusions concerning the effects of
political coloration on the broadness of programme selection.
As for the Paris theatre, the less said the better. The
big
success of the
season is Jean Cocteau's
Les Parents Terribles,
slickly ca!>t and tastily per–
formed at the city-owned privately-leased Ambassadeurs in the Champs
Elysees. And a fine piece of cheese it is, which would be perfect for Broad–
way did it not depend for its enjoyment upon a detailed knowledge of the
mores and shenannigans of the French bourgeoisie. Like his earlier
boob–
thumper,
La
Voix Humaine,
the present piece is obviously a bid for that
long-overdue Academy fauteuil. But his case has not been helped by the
recent scandal in which the City of Paris (egged on by the jealousy of big
success-specialist Bernstein?) has canceled the theatre lease in disapproval of
Cocteau's having given free tickets to school-children, the town fathers not
deeming the play (a tasty little tidbit full of incestuous overtones, a son
cuckolding his father with the latter's mistress, a fairly murderous maiden
aunt, and other charming concomitants of bourgeois domestic life) the best–
chosen pabulum for the youthful mind. While not agreeing on the "moral"
basis, the present writer is quite in accord aesthetically with the ancients'
opinion. Cocteau contra: his theatre-manager has instituted a five-million–
franc damage suit against the City. M. Cocteau's other recent contribution to
French culture was a blow-by-blow radio broadcast of the midnight mass
and other Christmas ceremonies from the mountain commune of Saint–
Veran in Queyras. How this new art-form sounded, your correspondent finds
himself unable to report at first hand : perhaps he will be excused for having
passed up its enjoyment in favor of sharing a bottle of bad
reveillon
cham-
pagne with the
copains.
.
. .
.
For there will not
be
much more tune for
revetllonrng.
France ndes
hell-bent for fascism and war ; before next
Reveillon,
certainly Europe and
probably France will have passed through hours too sombre and sanguinary
to
leave one much heart for seasonal gayeties.
Pms
SEAN NIALL
Christmas
Day
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