Latest news with #Printemps
France 24
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- France 24
Versailles orchestra plays New York in 'Affair of the Poisons'
Artist Kylie Rose was among the performances in the program "Versailles in Printemps: The Affair of the Poisons" Monday's immersive show "Versailles in Printemps: The Affair of the Poisons" centered on France's 17th-century period of excess and seediness that its creator, Andrew Ousley, told AFP has parallels to the present day. At the evening staged in Manhattan's new Printemps luxury emporium, guests and performers alike donned velvet waistcoats, silky corsets, feathered headdresses and powdered makeup. Core to the performance's tale was the discovery of arsenic, Ousley said -- the first "untraceable, untasteable poison." "Everybody was just poisoning everybody." The Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra performs at the Printemps store in Lower Manhattan July 21, 2025 during a show called "Versailles in Printemps: The Affair of the Poisons" © TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP And at the web's center? A midwife and fortune teller named La Voisin, he said, a "shadowy-like person who basically would peddle poison, peddle solutions, peddle snake oil." "She was the nexus," Ousley continued, in a scheme that "extended up to Louis XIV, his favorite mistresses" -- inner circles rife with backstabbing and murder plots. The poisoning scandal resulted in a tribunal that resulted in dozens of death sentences -- until the king called it off when it "got a little too close to home," Ousley said with a smile. "To me, it speaks to the present moment -- that this rot can fester underneath luxury and wealth when it's divorced from empathy, from humanity." The drag opera artist Creatine Price was the celebrant of a recent so-called "Black Mass" at a night of classical music and performance art in lower Manhattan © TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP Along with a program of classical music, the performance included elaborately costumed dancers, including one who tip-toed atop a line of wine bottles in sparkling platform heels. The drag opera artist Creatine Price was the celebrant of the evening's so-called "Black Mass," and told AFP that the night was "a beautiful way to sort of incorporate the ridiculousness, the campness, the farce of Versailles with a modern edge." Drag is "resistance," she said, adding that her act is "the essence of speaking truth to power, because it really flies in the face of everything in the opera that is standard, whether it's about gender or voice type." Period instruments Madame Athénaïs de Montespan played by Erin Dillon joins other performance artists at the Printemps store for a performance of the Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra © TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP The Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra formed in 2019, and its first stateside tour is underway: the series of shows kicked off at Festival Napa Valley in California before heading to New York. On Wednesday it will play another, more traditional show at L'Alliance New York, a French cultural center in Manhattan. The orchestra aims to champion repertoire primarily from the 17th and 18th centuries, and plays on period instruments. At the evening staged in Manhattan's new Printemps luxury emporium, which opened on Wall Street on March 1, guests and performers alike donned velvet waistcoats, silky corsets, feathered headdresses and powdery makeup © TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP "Playing a historical instrument really gives me a feeling of being in contact with the era in which the music was composed," said Alexandre Fauroux, who plays the natural horn, a predecessor to the French horn distinguished by its lack of valves. Ousley runs the organization Death of Classical, an arts non-profit that puts on classical shows in unexpected places, including the catacombs of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery and crypts in Manhattan. Monday's spectacle included over-the-top performance, but Ousley emphasized that the evening was ultimately a celebration of classical artists. "These are players who play with such energy, to me it's more like a rock band than an orchestra," he said. Monday's immersive show "The Affair of the Poisons" centered on France's 17th-century time of excess and seediness that its creator, Andrew Ousley, told AFP has parallels to the present day © TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP And the mission of putting on such shows is about something bigger, Ousley said: "How do you fight against the darkness that seems to be winning in the world?" "When you can sit and feel, with a group of strangers, something that you know you feel together -- that's why I work, because of that shared connection, experience and transcendence." © 2025 AFP
Wall Street Journal
14-07-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Can the French Reinvent America's Broken Department-Store Model?
The American department-store model is broken. A French operator that recently opened a flagship store in New York City thinks it has a better one. Printemps New York is following the European department-store playbook of serving up enough food and drinks, exhibitions and other activities to keep shoppers occupied far beyond the fitting room.
Sydney Morning Herald
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Parisians shattered my stereotype about them. How typically rude
When you think of France, what exactly do you think of? Pretentiousness? Croissants? Perhaps Serge Gainsbourg smoking (although not for long since a nationwide smoking ban has just been announced). For me, it's Owen Wilson walking beside La Seine. But that is perhaps a result of watching Midnight in Paris at 16 instead of going out and doing normal teenage things like getting drunk and vomiting on my friend's sofa. Maybe you think of the kind of Parisian disdain that has long been the nation's stereotype. It's a portrayal that Netflix's wildly successful Emily in Paris has leaned into, to the point where a character in the show's third season says: 'The French are just Italians in a bad mood.' On a recent trip to France and Italy, my first time visiting, I was curious to see if this claim rang true. Like many, I arrived in Paris full of assumptions: that the French would be aloof and allergic to tourists. My partner and I expected to be made fun of for our attempts to order coffee, over-reliance on tote bags and out-of-style sneakers. Instead, we got the most welcoming 'bonjour' I had ever heard. It was at a boutique store that neither me nor my partner had any financial right to be in. And yet, the 'assistante commerciale' was unbelievably gentle. She helped us find something in our budget (a key ring) and complimented my girlfriend's jacket, asking if it was vintage (it was). On the metro system, I thought that would be the moment we would finally meet the sinister Parisians who pushed and shoved … And yet, we didn't. Even when we went to the rooftop bar of the gorgeous department store Printemps, I thought about how 'touristy' my partner and I must have looked as we were taking photos of our coffee, and the Eiffel Tower. Instead, a local simply said, 'It is a beautiful view, huh?' Loading Around the corner from our hotel in the 9th Arrondissement, there was a bar run by a gentleman called Robert. I couldn't understand why he was so kind. My girlfriend whispered to me, 'Your hair is looking a lot like Paul Mescal's these days … Maybe he thinks you're him?' He took us through his bar, showing us the kitchen, offering shots, conversing throughout, as if we were not just locals, but friends (or as the French say, 'poto', a loose translation of our term 'mate'). He was being like this well before I told him that my name was also Robert, a revelation that, as you can imagine, called for even more celebration. I asked him about the stereotype of the French, the whole notion they were 'Italians in a bad mood'. Robert was not surprised by the perception, but remarked that this social flaw was actively being 'dealt with' by the younger people of the city. His view was that the old French stereotype is a result of the older, more 'conservative' generations. He said he employs many people who were not born in Paris, let alone France, and how this growth in both diversity and community has opened the potential for a kinder, more inclusive cultural shift. I found the pinnacle of this shift in the Latin Quarter. Across La Seine, the 5th Arrondissement, is home to a buffet of different cultures, all intertwined and connected. There are pizza restaurants owned by off-the-boat Italians that serve every type of pork under the Tuscan sun, right next to a Halal kebab shop. It is a fascinating area, not too dissimilar to Melbourne's Sydney Road, albeit … no offence, a little prettier.
The Age
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Parisians shattered my stereotype about them. How typically rude
When you think of France, what exactly do you think of? Pretentiousness? Croissants? Perhaps Serge Gainsbourg smoking (although not for long since a nationwide smoking ban has just been announced). For me, it's Owen Wilson walking beside La Seine. But that is perhaps a result of watching Midnight in Paris at 16 instead of going out and doing normal teenage things like getting drunk and vomiting on my friend's sofa. Maybe you think of the kind of Parisian disdain that has long been the nation's stereotype. It's a portrayal that Netflix's wildly successful Emily in Paris has leaned into, to the point where a character in the show's third season says: 'The French are just Italians in a bad mood.' On a recent trip to France and Italy, my first time visiting, I was curious to see if this claim rang true. Like many, I arrived in Paris full of assumptions: that the French would be aloof and allergic to tourists. My partner and I expected to be made fun of for our attempts to order coffee, over-reliance on tote bags and out-of-style sneakers. Instead, we got the most welcoming 'bonjour' I had ever heard. It was at a boutique store that neither me nor my partner had any financial right to be in. And yet, the 'assistante commerciale' was unbelievably gentle. She helped us find something in our budget (a key ring) and complimented my girlfriend's jacket, asking if it was vintage (it was). On the metro system, I thought that would be the moment we would finally meet the sinister Parisians who pushed and shoved … And yet, we didn't. Even when we went to the rooftop bar of the gorgeous department store Printemps, I thought about how 'touristy' my partner and I must have looked as we were taking photos of our coffee, and the Eiffel Tower. Instead, a local simply said, 'It is a beautiful view, huh?' Loading Around the corner from our hotel in the 9th Arrondissement, there was a bar run by a gentleman called Robert. I couldn't understand why he was so kind. My girlfriend whispered to me, 'Your hair is looking a lot like Paul Mescal's these days … Maybe he thinks you're him?' He took us through his bar, showing us the kitchen, offering shots, conversing throughout, as if we were not just locals, but friends (or as the French say, 'poto', a loose translation of our term 'mate'). He was being like this well before I told him that my name was also Robert, a revelation that, as you can imagine, called for even more celebration. I asked him about the stereotype of the French, the whole notion they were 'Italians in a bad mood'. Robert was not surprised by the perception, but remarked that this social flaw was actively being 'dealt with' by the younger people of the city. His view was that the old French stereotype is a result of the older, more 'conservative' generations. He said he employs many people who were not born in Paris, let alone France, and how this growth in both diversity and community has opened the potential for a kinder, more inclusive cultural shift. I found the pinnacle of this shift in the Latin Quarter. Across La Seine, the 5th Arrondissement, is home to a buffet of different cultures, all intertwined and connected. There are pizza restaurants owned by off-the-boat Italians that serve every type of pork under the Tuscan sun, right next to a Halal kebab shop. It is a fascinating area, not too dissimilar to Melbourne's Sydney Road, albeit … no offence, a little prettier.
Associated Press
28-05-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
NYC Socialite Turns Author in Scandalous New Summer Beach Read: Park Avenue Firesale
From cocktail parties to courtrooms, four women face the fallout of love, lies, and luxury in this summer's most addictive read 'For me, writing this book was a healing experience. Some women go to therapy- I wrote a novel.'— Michele Wood NEW YORK CITY, NY, UNITED STATES, May 28, 2025 / / -- With Memorial Day behind us and summer officially underway, Park Avenue Firesale is catching fire as the must-have beach read of the season. From the glittering streets of Manhattan to the sun-soaked shores of the Hamptons, debut author Michele Wood, NYC socialite and luxury insider, debuts a sizzling, sharply observed social satire about four women facing public scandal, private betrayal, and the kind of downfall New York society loves to read about. The book follows these high-powered women, each at the top of their game, whose lives are suddenly upended by financial collapse, political scandal, and romantic betrayal. But these women don't stay down for long. With relationships tested, secrets exposed, and new identities forged, Park Avenue Firesale is a story about survival, friendship, the art of reinvention, and the seductive chaos of life inside New York's elite circles. 'It's not autobiographical. It's what happens when your world cracks open, and instead of running, I wrote,' says Wood. 'I researched, fantasized, and built these women as a form of catharsis. For me, writing this book was a healing experience. Some women go to therapy- I wrote a novel.' A long-time New Yorker and philanthropist, Michele has rebuilt her life as an entrepreneur in real estate, design, and fine wine. Her debut novel is the product of years of writing, late nights, emotional truths, and a desire to entertain and empower. The book launch features collaborations with luxury perfume house Veronique Gabai, including events at Bergdorf Goodman and Printemps in NYC. Available now via Amazon Follow the soft launch on Instagram @parkavenuefiresale Michele Wood Park Avenue Firesale email us here Visit us on social media: Instagram Other Legal Disclaimer: EIN Presswire provides this news content 'as is' without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.
