OPERA IN AIX; HEAT WAVE; WEEKENDS ROUGES

OPERA IN AIX (*)

I promised to write about our July opera and here it is in a nutshell:
the 2015 edition of this annual Festival d'Art Lyrique was exceptional, with four beautiful productions and one ugly, off-putting one that I walked out of.

Abduction from the Seraglio

For Mozart's ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO, Austrian director Martin Kusej had the bad idea to transplant this lovely Singspiel to a jihadist camp in the Sahara desert where Konstanze and her servants Blonde and Pedrillo are being held hostage by Pasha Selim in a Bedouin tent guarded by a dozen machine-gun-toting terrorists. Chief guard Osmin threatens to behead them with a scimitar.

In France, we vividly remember the tense days last September when Islamist terrorists kidnapped a French tourist guide in Algeria and beheaded him. More recently, on home ground, a businessman in the Lyons area was kidnapped at his place of work and driven to the site of a nearby chemical plant where the kidnapper beheaded his victim, hung the head and an ISIS flag on the entrance gate, and then tried to ram his vehicle into a chemical storage tank which failed to explode. And who can forget the murderous attack by Islamic extremists on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris last January?

This Entführung (Abduction) was performed in the original German, but director Kusej had taken the liberty to insert references in English to the rapacious West that robs the Arab world of its oil, completely changing the tone of the libretto and making it political, aggressive, and inconsistent with Mozart's text and intent.

First performed in 1782, the Abduction had the then-popular orientalist theme of a turquerie − a lighthearted and often comic treatment of the "exotic" culture of the Ottoman empire which not so long ago had been a military threat to Austria. It was the European view of orientalism − of harems and libertinage, of janissaries and stereotypes of Turkish despotism which Mozart brilliantly countered by a selfless final act of forgiveness and tolerance on the part of Pasha Selim who had fallen in love with Konstanze but sets her free. 

When Festival Director Bernard Foccroulle saw the first rehearsal he asked Martin Kusej to remove certain scenes, which Kusej objected to in the name of artistic freedom. Finally, a compromise was reached and the final scene now shows Osman throwing down the bloody clothes of murdered hostages rather than their severed heads. Not reassured, Foccroulle then took the unusual step of calling for increased security (all bags were inspected at the entrance) and making an announcement before each performance referring to his personal differences with director Kusej's interpretation and asking the audience to make their own judgment.

That judgment was uniformly negative, ranging from shock to outrage. Even the critics were harsh, though some were careful to spare the singers who valiantly fought their way through the horrible staging and poor lighting of this mutilated Mozart.

Luckily, the other operas were just the opposite: delights for the eye and ear.

Alcina at work

For openers, ALCINA by Haendel with inventive sets and imaginative staging by Katie Mitchell. A tour de force of singing by Patricia Petitbon in the title role in an unabashedly sensual performance. Multiple sequences of tie-me-up, tie-me-down and beds being made and unmade at a furious pace, sometimes pushing the erotic envelope but never going over the top. All this so the pleasure-seeking Alcina and her sister and fellow-sorceress Morgana can seduce all comers and then transform their lovers into stuffed animals to be shown off in taxidermy display cases. The very clever sets showed the unconscious lover sliding into a wicked machine and coming out as a stuffed animal.
Alcina, magic at its best. A triumph.

Midsummer Night's Dream

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM by Benjamin Britten, staged by Robert Carsen. The enchanting sets were just as beautiful and effective as they were in 1991 when Carsen first created this production for Aix-en-Provence. Nothing was changed; proof that a thing of beauty need not be updated to retain its appeal. Widely applauded by public and critics alike.

Iolanta

IOLANTA by Tchaikovsky and PERSEPHONE by Stravinsky. These two one-act operas were performed together, beautifully staged by Peter Sellars with sets that served both pieces. An achingly romantic and moving Iolanta that brought the audience to its feet was followed by the poem Persephone, written by André Gide and set to music by Stravinsky.

Persephone

Persephone was read by French actress Dominique Blanc and "danced" by a small troupe of Cambodian dancers. Magnificent.

For a video  interview with Dominique Blanc and Peter Sellars in Aix, click here: 

SVADBA is an a capella work for six female voices written by Serbian-born Ana Sokolovic who lives in Montreal where she teaches composition. Svadba, which means Marriage, is the story of a group of girlfriends getting together to say goodbye to one of them who is getting married. Sung in Serbo-Croatian (subtitled). A wonderful surprise.

If any of these productions come your way, run to see them.  

HEAT WAVE

We're well into the second month of a heat wave, which is getting hard to handle for those who, like me, don't have air conditioning. Many of the older houses in the center of Aix have no central AC and people make do with ventilators. But my husband and I decided a long time ago that our best defense was going to the movies, which we do every afternoon. Luckily, we have three movie houses with multiple theatres right in the center of town where we must have seen at least two dozen films in the past month. You return to a hot apartment, take a cool shower and make do until you can open all the windows for a bit of a breeze.

Want to know how hot it is indoors? I have a rather artsy necklace made of thin rubber disks. When I pulled it out of a drawer the other day I found a stuck-together lump. With careful untangling and a dusting with talcum powder I managed to limit the damage to a few ruined disks, but I fear finding more surprises (sticky rubber-tipped ear clips?) in my drawers.
The Aix city government has its own problems and had to close the Public Finance building when the air conditioning system broke down. No tax or fine collection until the problem is fixed. 

Trains have suffered significant delays due to buckled rails, and several French cities have endured their highest temperatures ever recorded, including Paris where the thermometer reached 39.7 Celsius (103.46 Fahrenheit). The most popular places on a hot day are the shallow wading pools that are a recent feature in cities like Nice, Bordeaux and elsewhere. Very effective for a cooldown and a lot more fun than air conditioning.  

Avignon 2015 poster

Our open-air operas start at 9:30PM when it may still be warm but no longer hot (except for the singers in costume), but the theatre festival in Avignon is taking a hit during this heat wave. More than 1300 plays are shown there during the month of July, most of them in the category Off throughout the day. Many of the temporary daytime theatres have no air conditioning and it pains me to see the actors and actresses who roam the streets, in costume and sweaty stage make-up, trying to lure the crowd to their hot little theatres. Some of our non-opera friends have come back with tales of overheating and it looks like this year, for the first time, I will not be going to Avignon for daytime theatre. 

WEEKENDS ROUGES

The only people who will not be held back by a mere heat wave are the French holiday goers who, like a line of unstoppable fire ants, move in a steady bumper-to-bumper column down the country's highways southward during weekends in July and August. Holiday rentals run from Saturday to Saturday, and people seem to prefer suffering painfully long days on packed roads rather than drive south on Sundays when only northbound traffic is dense.

Traffic forecasters invariably announce another weekend rouge throughout these two months, with the exception of a couple of notorious weekends noirs (worst category) in early and late August. 

Makes me perspire just to think about it. I think I'm going to join those ladies in the fountain. 


(*) To read more about Opera in Aix in my book TAKING ROOT IN PROVENCE click here:  

BETTENCOURT; DSK; PRINCESS CRISTINA; SWEDISH ROYAL WEDDING; HOLLANDE-ROYAL; LE BAC AND PHILOSOPHY

BETTENCOURT

François-Marie Banier

Remember the Bettencourt case (blog 2/28/15) and some of its players?  Françoise Meyers-Bettencourt, only child of France's richest woman Liliane Bettencourt, filed a complaint against Mrs. Bettencourt's close friend and confidant François-Marie Banier for abuse of weakness when she discovered that her elderly mother had given him gifts valued at more than one billion euros and at one point named him her sole heir. In his defense Banier said that Mrs. Bettencourt was a very generous person who liked him and could do with her money as she pleased. Last week, the court disagreed, finding that Banier had exercised undue influence on a mentally fragile person and sentenced him to three years in prison (six months suspended), a €350,000 fine, and reimbursement of €158 million to Bettencourt.

Françoise Meyers-Bettencourt with her sons

In all, ten people of Mrs. Bettencourt's entourage had been charged and eight were found guilty, among them Patrice de Maistre and Pascal Wilhelm, Mrs. B's financial advisers, who were given 18-month sentences and fines. The charges against former Budget Minister Eric Worth of obtaining illegal cash contributions for the presidential campaign of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 were dropped for lack of evidence.

DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN

In another courtroom, this one in the northern city of Lille, former IMF Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was cleared of all charges of aggravated pimping in the so-called Carlton Affair. After four long years of legal battles following his arrest for sexual assault at the Sofitel Hotel in New York in May 2011, DSK was finally a free man.

Aged and beaten-looking today, he has paid dearly for his sins:  he lost his job at the IMF as well as his chance of winning the French presidential election in 2012 for which he was poised; his wife, wealthy and popular French journalist Anne Sinclair, left him in 2013; much of his fortune went to pay lawyers' fees and a financial settlement to his New York victim, and he suffered heavy financial losses in an investment firm he had founded with a partner who bankrupted the company and then committed suicide. Today he looks far older than his 65 years, burnt out and burnt up in the sordid and humiliating blowup of a brilliant career in politics and finance. Icarus revisited.

PRINCESS CRISTINA OF SPAIN

Princess Cristina, youngest sister of King Felipe of Spain, has suffered another setback in the corruption scandal in which she and her husband, former Olympic handball medalist Iñaki Urdangarin, are accused of embezzling €6 million from a charitable foundation (blog 12/3/14). In November 2014, she appeared before a judge in Palma de Mallorca who rejected her argument that she knew nothing about her husband's business dealings and trusted him implicitly. Judge Jose Costa found that she had personally benefitted from the embezzlement and ordered her to stand trial, together with her husband, on charges of tax fraud. The trial, in which Urdangarin is also accused of money laundering, is scheduled to take place at the end of this year in Palma de Mallorca.

In an effort to distance himself from this situation and the fallout of his father's scandal-plagued late reign and sudden abdication in 2014, young King Felipe, who had vowed to restore public trust in the monarchy, has now revoked the title of Duchess of Palma de Mallorca that was bestowed on his sister Cristina at the time of her marriage in 1997. Urdangarin automatically lost his title of Duke at the same time. If convicted, Cristina could face up to four years in prison, while her husband may get up to 19 years.

SWEDISH ROYAL WEDDING

More cheerful news reaches us from Sweden, where on June 13th Prince Carl Philip Bernadotte, youngest of King Carl Gustaf's three children, married his Swedish girlfriend Sofia Hellqvist. Like his father and his two older sisters before him, he married a commoner, upholding the growing trend that has been injecting non-royal blood into most present-day European monarchies. Whereas Germany used to furnish a seemingly inexhaustible supply of princes and princesses to marriageable royal candidates, today's crop of future kings or queens has been looking elsewhere and choosing from a wider pool.

Cases in point: King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands married Argentine economist Maxima Zorreguieta who today is the most popular queen Holland has ever known; King Felipe of Spain married television journalist Letizia Ortiz; Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark married Australian lawyer Mary Donaldson; Crown Prince Haakon of Norway married single mother and fellow Norwegian Mette-Marit; Prince William of Great Britain married Kate Middleton. All these young women are or will be queen one day, proving that one need not be born to the job − or that the job is rather irrelevant. 

At one time, royal marriages were a matter of forming political alliances, but today's young couples are willing to forego the throne to marry for love. In the constitutional monarchies where present-day royals play a largely ceremonial role, there is little reason why fresh blood should not mingle with stale blue blood. And do we really care who marries whom up there, when it is our representatives in Parliament who decide our future?

(Confession: I would miss the glorious royal weddings on television, having relished those of Kate and Maxima. Yum-yum).

 

HOLLANDE-ROYAL

Spanish State visit to Elysée Palace

Hollande-Royal in Manila

Another couple frequently in the news is President François Hollande and his former partner-in-life Ségolène Royal. Joined in politics for over 30 years but never in matrimony (though parents of four children), they split up when Hollande took off with Valérie Trierweiler with whom he lived a very public break-up in 2014 at her discovery of his secret romance with an actress (blog 1/30/14). Ségolène Royal, meanwhile, had been defeated in her run for senator and been politically marginalized. While the man who wished to be a "normal" president was living an abnormally complicated love life in the glare of the press, exit Trierweiler from the scene and, before long, re-enter Ségolène Royal after President Hollande saved her from the political wilderness and appointed her Minister of the Environment. Not only is Royal back in her element of high-level politics but also by the side of François Hollande. She recently accompanied him on official visits to the French Caribbean and to Manila, and acted as First Lady when she and the president welcomed the king and queen of Spain during their State visit to France on June 2nd. As a duo Hollande-Royal form a formidable whole that is stronger than its individual parts − at least in politics. After her painful personal and political repudiation, Royal is back on top, and together they seem just like other "normal" people who find it difficult to live with but also without each other.   

LE BAC AND PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE

This week saw the beginning of the week-long final exams that conclude the six-year secondary education in France and leads to the Baccalaureate, popularly known as le bac, and access to university. The first of these standardized exams is Philosophy, which all students have to take and which is a uniquely French requirement.

In French society philosophers or "intellectuals" occupy a special place and seem to be more visible than elsewhere. Ever since Descartes and the subsequent Age of Enlightenment, French thinkers such as Voltaire, Michelet, Rousseau, Comte or de Tocqueville have contributed greatly to Western intellectual thought. But according to a recent article in The Guardian, the days when France shaped the values of other nations are long gone and in the course of the 20th century, with the exception of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Lévi-Strauss and Foucault, France's influence on western philosophy has waned to a sputter and today carries little weight in the universe of creative international thinkers. In his article The French Malaise Oxford professor Sudhir Hazareesingh describes the progressive loss of intellectual creativity and imagination in France and the dimming of its radiance across the world over the past decades. Contemporary French thinking has become increasingly more inward-looking, he writes, which is explained at least in part by a collective recognition that France is no longer a major power and French no longer a global language. Historian Pierre Nora laments France's "shrinking horizons, the atomization of the life of the mind, and national provincialism". It's a long way from the self-confident mission civilisatrice in the colonies and "the deeply held belief of the beneficial quality of French civilization for humankind".

The most public of all French thinkers today is Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of the New Philosophers, a movement better known for what it rejects than for what it espouses. He is often seen and heard in the press, although hardly ever on philosophical issues, and with his glamorous wife, singer-actress Arielle Dombasle, is a regular of the Parisian beau monde. Always dressed in black suits and starched white shirts worn open way-way-down, he has been called le plus beau décolleté de France -- perhaps one reason why Hazareesingh in The Guardian calls him "a permanent spectacle of frivolity and self delusion".

Ouch!

……
A delicious sound calls me to the window where I hear a young voice trilling to a Haendel aria accompanied on the harpsichord. It's that time of the year in Aix-en-Provence, where the pre-opera season of master classes, open rehearsals, conferences and free concerts started a week ago.
I must go now, but I promise to be back to you next month with some up-close news from our opera festival.

MAY HOLIDAYS; SCHOOL REFORM; CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

MAY HOLIDAYS

In France, the month of May counts four official holidays, which inevitably results in four long weekends. It is a complicated time for those who have deadline projects or emergencies requiring outside help. 

[My apartment renovation, already three weeks past its due date, took another hit when our workman, who is his own boss, announced that - naturellement - he would not be working on any of those holidays and would in fact add one more day off to faire le pont. There went another week.] 

In addition to their standard paid vacation time of 35 days per year, the shortened 35-hour work week has resulted in many employees earning compensatory time off for additional hours worked (called RTT time), which they use to "bridge" a mid-week holiday to the nearest weekend. Some people use their RTT time to take a number of short breaks throughout the year, but the month of May is particularly vulnerable to repeated long and longer weekends. The government's position is that what is lost in productivity is gained in money spent on hotels, restaurants, tolls and other travel expenses. 

In case you need to be reminded of the May holidays in France, here are some helpful pictures from blogger Annie André. This year the holidays occur on May 1, May 8, May 14 and May 25.

With a bit of planning it is all quite manageable, but it still was a bit of a shock when last Friday, following the Ascension holiday on Thursday and just two days before paper tax returns were due (electronic filings are due later), my husband found the local tax offices in Aix closed with a handwritten sign on the door saying Exceptionnellement fermé, which translates to: we are taking the Friday off to make a four-day weekend. Sorry−no tax advice, no tax collection, go home and come back next week.

SCHOOL REFORM

Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

One person who is not likely to take much time off in May is our Minister of Education, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. She is charged with the sticky project of reforming the national high-school curriculum, but her proposals have met with severe criticism, and a number of teacher unions have called for a nationwide strike on May 19th.

French public schools are free and have long had a good reputation but teaching methods have changed little since our parents' time and are producing increasingly poor results. In December 2013 the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published its latest PISA* Survey (Program for International Student Assessment) that compares math, reading and science skills in 15-year-old students from 65 countries. It showed that the unbeatable Asians took the first five places (Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea) and that in mathematics France had dropped to 25th place (from 9th place in 2003). Numerous reasons were given, including fatal budget cuts, and numerous improvements suggested, but few educators agree with the program of Najat Vallaud-Belkacem which (in a nutshell and limited here to its most objectionable elements) proposes to drop Latin and Greek from the national curriculum as well as compulsory German, considered "elitist" subjects, in favor of rather vague "interdisciplinary studies" and courses like The Expansion of Islam as more appropriate for today than Medieval History.

It is undeniable that children from poor and immigrant backgrounds do less well than others, but bringing the overall level of education down to that of the poorest performers is seen as a great disservice to all. The message is read as: in the name of equality we should all be equally poorly educated. 

Equality is indeed high on the agenda of our socialist government and fits its utopian image of a fair world. This administration takes a dim view of the rich (a campaign theme of presidential candidate François Hollande) and of the world of finance. Yet, intellectual brilliance is much admired and the vast majority of high-level government positions are filled by people formed at the elite Ecole Normale d'Administration, among them François Hollande and most of his ministers. It is at the high-school level that the government wants to "level downward" to motivate the laggers, in hopes that this will inspire them to higher educational goals later on. The protesters' signs of "Equal elitism" or "Latin Makes Other Languages Live" speak for themselves.  

Despite general agreement on the need for school reform, it is the Vallaud-Belkacem reform that draws criticism and calls for debate. Unfortunately, on the very day of the teachers' strike, Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced that this school reform would be imposed by decree the next day rather than by vote, and the decree was indeed published in the Journal Officiel of May 20, 2015. Considering the strong objection of many teachers, this hurried implementation of the new rules by decree may indicate the government's fear of prolonged strikes and the hope that a sentiment of it's-too-late-now will set in and get teachers to give up the fight. But this is France, and change never comes without a fight. Stay tuned...

(*) See the full PISA report here: 

CANNES FILM FESTIVAL and JEWELRY HEIST

A week before the 2015 Cannes Film Festival opened on May 13th, the chic Cartier jewelry shop on the famous seaside Croisette was robbed of nearly €18 million worth of gems. In its smooth and professional execution it resembled previous thefts in Cannes, notably in 2013 when the biggest-ever heist took place at the Carlton hotel where Israeli jeweler Lev Leviev was proudly displaying his "Extraordinary Diamonds" collection and a single man managed to make off with two cases of exceptionally large and pure diamonds estimated to be worth 136 million dollars. During the film festival that same year €1 million worth of Chopard jewelry to be worn by one of the actresses was stolen from a room safe at the hotel Novotel and, days later, during a gala evening at the Eden Roc Hotel in nearby Cap d'Antibes a €2 million diamond necklace from Swiss firm Di Grigogono was robbed. Not a single shot was fired in any of these robberies. Arsène Lupin lives! 

Jewellers like Harry Winston, Cartier, Chopard, or Bulgari are more than happy to showcase their creations on beautiful actresses and models at this film festival with its worldwide television audience.

But perhaps the time has come for actresses to start wearing "fun" jewelry at Cannes. A good fake worn with style and panache on an haute couture dress would fool us all, and Cannes would be a safer place — but perhaps a tad less exciting.

RADIO FRANCE; SEGOLENE ROYAL

RADIO FRANCE

This past month France has been experiencing a record-breaking strike at Radio France, the revered public-service radio broadcaster that houses seven separate stations and counts 5000 employees. Radio is still the first source for news in France and as essential at breakfast time as coffee and croissants, so when news was replaced by canned music for weeks on end it was a major irritant. The strike was called in protest against planned job cuts and program reductions. Midway through the tense negotiations, the recently appointed CEO Mathieu Gallet had to make way for a mediator at the insistence of the unions involved. Nevertheless, it took 28 days and a push from the Minister of Culture before four of the five unions finally accepted a return to work. It was the longest strike ever in French public radio and cost €1 million per week.

Mathieu Gallet

As part of the much-needed reforms and cuts in public spending imposed by the European Commission, and armed with a devastating report from French Treasury watchdog La Cour des Comptes, President Hollande went looking for a hatchet man and appointed Mathieu Gallet, former head of the INA (Institut National de l'Audiovisuel). His mission is to bring Radio France more in line with other institutions and reduce its annual deficit of €21 million. Here is what he's up against:

In the past ten years, when other companies suffered the consequences of the global financial crisis, the cosseted cocoon of Radio France was unaffected and took on 1000 new staff members, bringing its total work force to 5000 (388 of them paid union representatives) who count among their accumulated privileges up to 13 weeks of paid vacation. It has two full-blown orchestras: the Orchestre National de France and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the renovation of its Maison de la Radio headquarters in Paris, budgeted at €262 million, has cost €575 million. It's an expensive outfit and the State coffers are empty.

Radio France headquarters

Whatever the final agreement will be, it will have been achieved at great cost and turbulence, once again illustrating just how difficult it is to effect change in France, particularly in the public sector which employs 20 percent of the total working population. Yet, the general public usually supports the strikers and shows great solidarity, at least in part generated by a common French characteristic:  fear of change.

The story of the French welfare system is a long one and dates back to the post World War II years when a 30-year period of uninterrupted growth and expansion made the country rich. It could well afford to increase paid vacation time from two weeks in 1946 to five weeks in 1982, and shift the cost of building a family entirely to the state. But the free healthcare and generous family allowances that were meant to counteract the population decline were kept in place once that population rebounded and France became the most fertile country in Europe with a growth rate of 2.01 in 2012 (on a par with Ireland). The same goes for most other welfare benefits, which have become acquired rights and are today seen as entitlements for life, at a cost that today's Treasury can no longer bear. Under pressure from Brussels to bring its budget deficit down to 3 percent of GDP by 2017 (representing a cut of €50 billion euros) it seems inevitable that some of these savings will have to come from France's welfare system.

It will be difficult to find this kind of money, especially since some of the more obvious solutions seem out of the question:

    increase the 35-hour workweek;
    raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 (planned for 2017) or beyond;
    reduce paid vacation time;
    allow shops to open on Sundays (currently only 12 Sundays a year);
    allow greater competition.

All the above have been debated and rejected by center-right and socialist governments alike, generally to appease those who warn of an "Americanization" of France and a decline of its vaunted standard of living. So what other solutions are there?

It seems to me that a secular country such as France could do without the religious holidays that go against its proclaimed laïcité (Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Pentecost Monday, Assumption Day August 15, All Saints Day). This could add five working days to the national economy without harming anyone.

And why not bring back the ECOTAX (blog 6/30/14) on heavy vehicles that would have provided €1.2 billion per year income with which to develop alternate transportation systems such as river and rail transport and more trams and pollution-free buses in cities, while providing employment for years to come? This Ecotax was already approved by the French Parliament but subsequently canceled by SEGOLENE ROYAL, Minister of the Environment, in response to protests by truck drivers in Brittany last year. Instead, said Royal, she would get this income from highway companies that have been charging too much toll anyway. The government negotiations with these companies have just ended with a clear advantage to the toll companies who agreed to freeze any toll increase for one year in exchange for an extension of their current contract. So far: Highwaymen 1 - Government 0, while leaving in place a government obligation to pay the Italian company that installed the Ecotax stations in France €850 million for breach of contract. A costly mess when you desperately need money.

Anne Hidalgo (L) and Ségolène Royal

One may question some other decisions by our Minister of the Environment, such as her recent objection to alternate driving days in Paris during another peak of fine-particle pollution that exceeded safety standards. No sooner had Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo decreed alternate driving days when a health hazard was reached than Ségolène Royal blocked the decree because she considered this an infringement on the rights of drivers and the dangerous levels had only existed for 24 hours. Only after 48 hours of continuous severe air pollution would she consider alternate driving days, she announced. Needless to say that clean air and health protection do not rank high for this Minister of the Environment.

Back to finding money:  Would it be an infringement of human rights to demand that driver's licenses be renewed every four years, like most anywhere else? To my knowledge, France is the only western country where a driver's license is issued for life. If the French government required regular renewals, even at a modest fee, this would bring in a flood of money - again, without any harm to anyone.  

Naive, perhaps?  Well, just sayin' …

Meanwhile, we are experiencing another weekend rouge, when the French leave massively for the coast or the mountains during staggered school vacations (this is the third and last 2-week Easter break). Trains and roads are clogged with vacationers, giving an impression that things cannot be all that bad.    

IN SHORT

Due to unusual circumstances (apartment renovation) PROVENCE TODAY has been unable to produce its blog this month. The work will continue for at least one more month, but there is a good chance that PT will be back after mid April.

FRENCH ELECTIONS

In the meantime, you might be interested in the results of the Departmental Elections which took place on March 22 and 29. President Hollande's Parti Socialiste (PS) took another severe beating and lost half of its departments, including Hollande's own Corrèze and Manuel Valls's Essone, both going to the right. The big winner was the center-right UMP opposition party which together with its allies now controls two-thirds of all departments. It is the fourth serious setback for the Socialist Party (in Municipal, European, Senatorial and Departmental elections) since François Hollande was elected president in 2012 and almost certainly kills any remaining chance at re-election in 2017.

Absenteeism was high (50%) and expectations were low, given the long list of Hollande's unfulfilled promises. The French press generally blamed this defeat on the divisions within the Socialist party where in the past year several ministers quit in protest against Hollande's policies and others were fired. Another reason given was the lack of any concrete changes in what is perceived by many as a misguided government program to combat unemployment and stimulate the economy.

President Hollande has refused to comment except to say that he will not change the course he is set on because he is convinced it is the right one. "We are beginning to turn the corner", he said. He might be right but the problem is that nobody believes him.

BERLUSCONI

How can we close without mentioning that on March 10 the highest court of Italy acquitted Silvio Berlusconi of charges of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute and subsequent abuse of power in the famous bunga-bunga case. Having just completed a community-service order following his tax fraud trial, he is now free to return to politics and spearhead opposition against Prime Minister Mario Renzi's reforms. Two other lawsuits are still pending against him:  one in Milan for paying off witnesses in the bunga-bunga case and another for political corruption in Naples.

We clearly have not heard the last yet of the 78-year-old billionaire bad boy of Italian politics.
Plus ça change ...

SEE YOU when the dust settles and the hammering stops - in a couple of weeks.  

Not quite my kitchen, but sometimes feels like it

Now THERE's an idea!

DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN; LILIANE BETTENCOURT; BERNARD TAPIE

This month of February, two long-running legal sagas have finally gone to court in France: those of Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Liliane Bettencourt. Another matter, thought long settled, bounced back to Bernard Tapie and into the news.

DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN

DSK in Lille

After the two-week trial of the Carlton Affair in Lille where he stood accused of aggravated pimping, a haggard-looking Dominique Strauss-Kahn could finally leave town and await the verdict, due in June, with some optimism. Following many days of testimony by a cast of characters that included prostitutes and an unsavory Belgian procurer named Dodo La Saumure, the final phase of his fall from grace contained at least one positive note for DSK when the prosecutor called for the charges against him to be dropped for lack of evidence. The man is being judged on legal grounds not moral ones, was the message, and legally the case was weak. 

If this trial with its share of sordid details did not elicit any laughs, the one who must have raised at least a chuckle was Dodo The Pimp when he said:  "Dominique Strauss-Kahn has tarnished my reputation."

THE BETTENCOURT CASE

Liliane Bettencourt

Twice postponed, the case concerning Liliane Bettencourt, heir to the L'Oreal fortune and France's richest woman (estimated net worth €33 billion), was finally heard in Bordeaux seven years after Bettencourt's daughter and only child, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, filed a criminal complaint for "exploitation of a person's mental and physical fragility for personal gain". She specifically accused François-Marie Banier, photographer, writer and society figure, of exercising undue influence on her mother and illegally obtaining gifts valued at €1 billion, while at the same time driving a wedge between mother and daughter.

Banier met Liliane Bettencourt when he was commissioned to photograph her for a magazine in 1987 and became friends with Mrs. Bettencourt and her husband Guy, who died in 2007. Witty, clever and entertaining, Banier became a frequent visitor and confidant of Mrs. Bettencourt who was interested in the arts.

In 2007, tipped off by people on her mother's household staff, Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers became aware of her mother's extreme generosity toward Banier and feared his increasing hold over her. In addition to gifts totaling around one billion euros (real estate, life insurance policies, master paintings, cash) she had also named him sole heir (since revoked). Those in Mrs. Bettencourt's immediate environment who disliked Banier's "arrogant ways" were happy to provide Françoise with evidence (including phone conversations secretly taped by the butler) of "advisors" exploiting her mother's alleged senility. Françoise's findings as well as her request that her mother undergo a medical examination of her mental state infuriated Liliane Bettencourt and caused the estrangement between mother and daughter that lasted for years but failed to sideline Banier. Françoise then filed a criminal complaint and turned the tapes over to the police.

Mrs. Bettencourt with friend Banier

Mrs. Bettencourt's personal bookkeeper told the court of regular cash payments to conservative political figures, including Nicolas Sarkozy (since cleared from wrongdoing for lack of evidence) and former Budget Minister Eric Worth who allegedly obtained illegal cash contributions for Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign and a job for his wife. The taped phone calls also revealed a multi-million euro gift of works of art to Banier's long-time companion Martin d'Orgeval and of €12 million in cash to Patrice de Maistre. The latter, who was Mme Bettencourt's financial manager, is overheard to give her advice on tax evasion, and persuaded her to invest €143 million in an online poker game company run by a friend of his.

In all, ten people are alleged to have profited illegally from Liliane Bettencourt's largesse and fragile mental state. Among them was her former nurse Alain Thurin, 64, who tried to commit suicide by hanging just hours before the trial opened and remains today in a coma.

Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers

Mrs. Bettencourt did not attend the trial. Frail and judged by a court-appointed medical team to be suffering from "dementia and moderately severe Alzheimer's disease" since 2006, she was declared incompetent to attend to her own affairs in 2011 and has since been placed under the legal guardianship of her eldest grandson, Jean-Victor Meyers.

The five-week trial in Bordeaux ended last week, with the verdict to be rendered on May 28th. But that may not be the end of it.  
Consider the scenario: a mother-daughter feud stoked by the mother's friend and court jester, an attempted suicide, spying servants, sticky-fingered lawyers, politicians, financial advisors and supplicants, all ready to take advantage of a confused elderly widow with too much money. This has all the makings of a great television series.

BERNARD TAPIE

Controversial French businessman and sometime actor Bernard Tapie got a nasty surprise on February 17th when the Court of Appeals of Paris overturned the 2008 decision by the Court of Arbitration that awarded Tapie €403 million for the fraudulent sale by the Crédit Lyonnais bank (CL) of Adidas, a company Tapie owned at the time. The Court of Appeals found that Tapie and his lawyer had pre-existing links to one of the three Arbitrators of the case, whose judgment was therefore considered not impartial and rendered the conclusion invalid. It is not clear how much money Tapie will have to reimburse.

Bernard Tapie with President Mittérand

In 1992, Tapie decided he wanted to go into politics and was named Minister of City Affairs by then president François Mittérand on condition that he divest himself of any business he owned so as to avoid potential conflicts of interest. Having bought the Adidas sportswear company several years earlier with the help of a loan from public bank Crédit Lyonnais, he asked CL to assist in the sale of Adidas and set the asking price at €335 million. In 1993, having found no takers, CL offered to buy Adidas itself and paid Tapie his asking price but soon afterward sold the company for €701 million to businessman Robert-Louis Dreyfus. Tapie claims that CL had known of the potential buyer all along but kept him hidden in order to make the deal itself. He sued CL and after fourteen years of legal proceedings Tapie requested and Christine Lagarde, then Economics Minister of President Nicolas Sarkozy, accepted that the matter be submitted to Arbitration for a speedier resolution. [Note: Tapie had meanwhile switched allegiance from the socialist to the centre-right UMP party, where he found the backing of Sarkozy just as he had won over Mittérand before.] The parties chose three arbitrators, who concluded that Tapie had indeed been cheated and ordered CL to pay him €403 million in damages and interest. 

Bernard Tapie with "supporters" Sarkozy and Lagarde

This may seem just another business dispute, but everything concerning the colorful Bernard Tapie tends to become a matter of national interest. He is handsome, brash, pugnacious and visible, able to charm men and women alike. A self-made millionaire, he has made and lost fortunes, owned a successful cycling team (winning the Tour de France twice), and the OM football club of Marseilles (national champion four times in a row). But in 1994 he was accused of match fixing, spent six months in prison, and had to resign as government minister. Released from prison, bankrupt, banned from football and ineligible for public office, he decided to become an actor and appeared in a film by Claude Lelouch, Hommes, Femmes, Mode d'Emploi, on stage in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, on television in the series Commissaire Valence and as a TV game show host. In 2011 he was the subject of an American documentary: "Who is Bernard Tapie?" by Marina Zenovich. 

In 2013 he bought a string of newspapers in the south, including the biggest regional paper La Provence, which brought him back to Marseilles where he was fondly remembered for his golden years at OM and where his outsize personality was a natural fit. Here, the gutsy street kid who outsmarts the stuffed-shirt bankers, dares to think big, is bling-bling to his eyebrows, happy to show off with a yacht, private plane, and multiple residences, is a bit of a comic-strip hero.

He borrowed heavily to buy the newspapers and had to sell his yacht and private plane to cover debts, and following the recent cancellation of his arbitrage award many of his assets have been seized. But to his fans, this is just another setback he will overcome. The man has been up and he has been down, but he is larger than life. He will find a way, he will be back. 
When and how?  Stay tuned for the next instalment.