Our spring Tours to Paris have been invariably
sold out in recent years, with our travelers consistently
rewarded by a wide variety of exciting performances in the
city’s plethora of beautiful theatres. Now we have chosen
an exceptional week for mid-May of 2009, which will include
a total of FIVE VARIED PERFORMANCES featuring today’s
most sought-after international stars. We are pleased that
these performances will take us to four of the city’s
glamorous theatres – the opulent Palais Garnier which
was the former opera house; the newer state-of-the-art Bastille
Opera which is now the home of the Opéra National de
Paris; the elegant ‘art nouveau’ Théâtre
des Champs-Elysées; and the Parisians’ own favorite
Théâtre du Châtelet. All of our tickets
have already been confirmed in excellent locations.
First,
we are fortunate to include a pair of Italian operatic landmarks
at the Bastille Opera. Giuseppe Verdi’s melodic melodrama
Un Ballo in Maschera will showcase the rich voices of soprano
Angelo Brown and tenor Evan Bowers as the romantic leads;
and we will enjoy the Premiere of Giacomo Puccini’s
gripping Tosca featuring Adina Nitescu, Aleksandrs Antonenko
and James Morris as the protagonists. A third opera will be
included at the revered Châtelet Theatre, where we are
thrilled to encounter today’s reigning dramatic tenor
Placido Domingo in one of his signature portrayals –
the title role of Franco Alfano’s verismo milestone,
Cyrano de Bergerac. (Domingo’s ‘Cyrano’
sold out all of the MET’s performances several years
ago and more recently caused a frenzy for tickets in Spain
at Valencia’s new opera house. This season it will be
the Châtelet’s turn to showcase Domingo’s
appearance as the famous French poet Cyrano de Bergerac.)
In
addition to our trio of major operas, our spring week in Paris
will also include one of the most sought-after concerts of
the season at the Champs-Elysées Theatre. The peerless
Vienna Philharmonic will be conducted by the charismatic Russian
maestro Valery Gergiev in a program of works by Sibelius,
Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky. And our fifth performance
will offer the variety of the romantic ballet Onegin at the
Palais Garnier, in the John Cranko choreography which vividly
captures the poignant Pushkin tale set to Tchaikovsky’s
sweeping score.
Mid-May
promises to be ideal weather to enjoy the natural beauty of
Paris and the richness of the city’s architecture. Our
excursions will take us to two priceless art museums which
are often overlooked and relatively uncrowded – the
Jacquemart-André Museum of Italian Renaissance treasures
and the private Nissim de Camondo residence containing 18th
and 19th century decorative arts. In view of the unusual variety
of our confirmed performances, we expect another sold-out
Tour of new and old friends for this exciting week in the
French cultural capital.
Monday,
May 18th, departure from New York’s Kennedy Airport
at 9:15 p.m. on Air France flight #11, scheduled to arrive
at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris at 10:45 a.m. on the
morning of the 19th. (Or independent travel.)
