Francophiles’ Guide to Quarantine, V. II

Solace in Culture

March 25, 2020By Heidi EllisonWhat's New Art & Culture
"Les Trois Baigneuses" (c. 1879-82), by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais.
“Les Trois Baigneuses” (c. 1879-82), by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), from the Paris Musées site. Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Petit Palais.

For all you francophiles out there, we have gathered more links to some formidable ways to entertain yourselves while in quarantine. Read on.

The Opéra de Paris continues to add new videos of full-length performances to its website. Mozart’s Don Giovanni is available here, but only until March 29. Visit this page for other replays currently available, including several Tchaikovsky’s complete symphonies.

Still from "Le Couronnement," by Jonathan Littell on the Opéra de Paris’s 3e Scène. © OnP/Les Films Pelléas
Still from “Le Couronnement,” by Jonathan Littell on the Opéra de Paris’s 3e Scène. © OnP/Les Films Pelléas

The opera’s “digital stage,” the 3e Scène, presents short films by artists from a variety of fields – among them Glen Keane, Mathieu Amalric, Bertrand Bonello, Jonathan Littell and Bret Easton Ellis. It is always online for free and has a special “lockdown program.” Don’t miss the dystopian “Storage,” in which the Paris Opera is maintained by a robot after the extinction of the human race.

For more symphonic music, the Orchestre de Paris is putting entire concerts online here.

A still from Plaisir d’Amour en Iran, by Agnès Varda.
A still from Plaisir d’Amour en Iran, by Agnès Varda.

If If you’d rather watch a film in French, the cinema chain MK2 is offering a selection of movies for free each week on mk2 Curiosity. This week the focus is on Iran, with a short subject, Plaisir d’Amour en Iran, by Agnès Varda, and other films. Check out their Festival à la Maison, created for those of us in quarantine, with films (e.g., Jean Vigo’s Zéro de Conduite), podcasts and activities for kids.

Most Paris museums are going out of their way to provide content for our “confinement.” For a list and links to their sites, click on “Every Paris museum” in the righthand column of this page. Paris Musées, for example, offers 300,000 images from the collections of all the city-owned museums in high definition.

Susi Korihana Thëri Bathing" (1972-74), by Claudia Andujar. © Claudia Andujar
“Susi Korihana Thëri Bathing” (1972-74), by Claudia Andujar. © Claudia Andujar

The Fondation Cartier has created a special site to present its current exhibition, “Claudia Andujar: La Lutte Yanomami,” while the Fondation Louis Vuitton has various online events on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, viewable with the hashtag #FLVchezvous, among them a preview of its new exhibition, “Au Diapason du Monde,” which goes online at 6pm today, and a concert by Lang Lang on Friday, March 27 at 5:30pm.

French humor isn’t for everyone, but English speakers who know France will almost certainly enjoy Paris-based British comedian Paul Taylor’s bilingual riffs on life in Paris for a foreigner.  Or, if you want to see a real French humorist, Kyan Khojandi’s show is subtitled in English:

Laughter may not be enough for those who are having a hard time with the quarantine or for any other reason. For online counseling, SOS Help‘s English-language hotline (01 46 21 46 46) in Paris offers “empathetic, nonjudgmental emotional support.” It has shortened its hours during the lockdown but remains open from 5pm to 9pm.

In case you missed last week’s “Francophiles’ Guide to Quarantine” (free films, audiobooks, music and more) read it here.

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