Turbo Travelguide » France

Pause for Picasso in Paris

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 05:18:42 +0000

The Picasso Museum in Paris, one of the major tourist attractions of the French capital, closed its doors on Sunday for a restoration that will last until February 2012. The museum hopes for a better welcome after the renovation for the approximately half million visitors who come each year. Also, the spaces for educational and cultural activities are adapted. The museum is housed in a Baroque mansion in the Marais district. In the coming months, the collection of approximately five thousand works will be moved elsewhere and after that the construction will begin early next year.

Live in a French tree-house

admin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:55:27 +0000

French tree-house

Enjoy the freedom and roam accross the region of Poitou-Charentes. The French region offers from now until October to two 7-day covered wagon arrangements. Pulled by a horse, accommodation for 5 persons and equipped with kitchenette, it is a special attraction for a caravan trip with the whole family. Lovers for a fixed place for the night can choose for a tree-house. A 5-person horse-drawn carriage for three days in high season (July-August) can be booked from € 393.55. Families in the autumn to make this special trip after paying € 317.28 (starting price).
In the midst of the “Parc Floral de la Belle”, south of the city of Poitiers, there are several tree for two – but also for family use (maximum 6 people). The wooden cottages are 4 to 6 meters from the ground and can be reached by a staircase. The high altitude huts all have a perfect view over the 25 hectare forest. Consumers find more information on www.tourisme-deux-sevres.com (horse-drawn carriage), www.tourisme-vienne.com and www.tourisme-vienne.com (tree).

New attractions Futuroscope in France

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:32:41 +0000

Futuroscope, also attractive for non-French

There are spectacular new 3 – and dynamic 4D films in Futuroscope. The Futuroscope theme park attractions take visitors on a journey into the future. The recently opened ‘EcoDingo’ is a futuristic race with 3D effects, which also offers some additional, as synchronous moving chairs. Twice as new is the first European animated entirely in digital 3D. In the humorous children’s’ Fly me to the Moon ‘ three young flies are to discover the famous Apollo 11. In December 2009 opens the dynamic 4D movie “Arthur and the Minimoys’, of the same movie from 2006. With 15 million visitors since its opening in 1987, the Futuroscope is the second largest park in France. www.futuroscope.com

Opéra Bastille, Paris 7 to 14 July 2009

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:23:05 +0000

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Opéra Bastille, Gerard Mortier, Director of the Opéra national de Paris, has commissioned the famous painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer with the entire creation (staging, sets, costumes) of a remarkable visual and musical performance brought into being in association with the composer Jörg Widmann, who wrote the music. Am Anfang (In the beginning) will be offered in seven exceptional performances from 7 to 14 July 2009 at the Opéra Bastille.
This exceptional commissioned work will showcase the policy Gerard Mortier has been conducting at the Opéra Bastille: that of opening lyric theatre up to other artistic disciplines. For this final production under his guidance, Gerard Mortier wanted to bring about a powerful and remarkable encounter of stage, painting, sculpture and music. With this musical work of a new kind – one which is both an installation and a performance – he makes his mark by demonstrating the openness of the Opéra de Paris to the interdisciplinary richness of contemporary art. It is not by chance that Gerard Mortier called on the talent of Anselm Kiefer. Am Anfang (In the Beginning) extends the artistic exploration the German artist initiated at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 2003 with Elektra. After his success with the public with Monumenta at the Grand Palais and the commissioning of a major work – Athanor – for the north staircase of the Louvre’s Cour Carré e in 2007, Anselm Kiefer today has taken possession of the Opéra Bastille front and back stages with an artistic elegy of as never been seen before. Conceived in close collaboration with Jörg Widmann, the German clarinettist and composer considered among the most brilliant of his generation, this determinedly contemporary production reinvents the stage of lyric theatre, and respods to the challenges set before by the great contemporary artists.

With Am Anfang (In the Beginning), Anselm Kiefer creates a completely new visual and musical work of art of international breadth, to forcefully take position in the history of art of music. An agnostic pageant, it describes the chaos and annihilation of peoples and civilizations – where the chosen people met with crushing defeat, mistreated by the great powers of the Fertile Crescent situated between Egypt and Mesopotamia. The “Fertile Crescent” is the name given to the region of the world, one of the cradles of our civilization lying between the Tigris and the Euphrates in the times when God seemed to be a vengeful, terrible and arbitrary deity of inexplicable cruelty. Job’s complaints and accusations of the Divine therefore have echoes in the three Abrahamic religions.

Dust and debris lie at the foot of twelve stark towers in this haunting landscape. The entire set carries with it a sense of inconsolable despair, in which the words of Isaiah and Jeremy resound with a pitiless relevance to the present day. Because in the end, isn’t History a perpetual series of new beginnings?

A metaphysical work transcended by theatrical illusion, it links the wandering of the Jewish people, incarnated by the Shekhinah, to the annihilated ancient empires such as those of Babylon, Jericho, Persepolis, Nineveh and to the ruins of post-war Germany symbolized by the “Trümmerfrauen”, or rubble women, in that same cycle of end and beginning.

A work of exceptional breadth, In the Beginning is a production which, for the first time in the Opéra Bastille’s history, takes place on all its stages and back stages. Unimaginable perspectives open up before spectators from the main stage, creating a number of smaller spaces where various scenes play out, linked to each other by the words of the prophets and Jörg Widmann’s music, whose rich melody casts a spell. The music indeed provides an infinitely subtle accompaniment to what the artist has to say, which is that the rubble of History, like the work of art itself – where all to come has already come to past – is only the beginning concealing the end which it holds within itself.

Am Anfang (At the beginning) by Anselm Kiefer will be offered in seven exceptional performances from 7th to 14th July 2009 at the Opéra Bastille. The Tuesday matinee, 14 July, will be by tradition, free entry.