1.
Villemomble
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Villemomble is a commune in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 12.1 km from the center of Paris, Villemomble is served by Le Raincy – Villemomble – Montfermeil station on Paris RER line E. There are seven public preschools/nurseries, Foch, Galliéni, François Mauriac, Montgolfier, Pasteur, Prévert, there are five public elementary schools, Foch I, Foch II, élémentaire d’application François Coppée Lamartine, Leclerc, and Saint-Exupéry. Private schools include École maternelle Saint-Alexis, École élémentaire Sainte-Julienne, And the junior and senior school of Institution Saint-Louis Blanche de Castille. Bonn-Hardtberg, Germany Droylsden, England where the shopping area is called Villemomble Square. Portimão, Portugal Communes of the Seine-Saint-Denis department INSEE Official website
2.
France
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France, officially the French Republic, is a country with territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European, or metropolitan, area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, Overseas France include French Guiana on the South American continent and several island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. France spans 643,801 square kilometres and had a population of almost 67 million people as of January 2017. It is a unitary republic with the capital in Paris. Other major urban centres include Marseille, Lyon, Lille, Nice, Toulouse, during the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The area was annexed in 51 BC by Rome, which held Gaul until 486, France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years War strengthening state-building and political centralisation. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a colonial empire was established. The 16th century was dominated by civil wars between Catholics and Protestants. France became Europes dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV, in the 19th century Napoleon took power and established the First French Empire, whose subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War, the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Algeria and nearly all the colonies became independent in the 1960s with minimal controversy and typically retained close economic. France has long been a centre of art, science. It hosts Europes fourth-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, France is a developed country with the worlds sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and ninth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, France remains a great power in the world, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a member state of the European Union and the Eurozone. It is also a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, originally applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name France comes from the Latin Francia, or country of the Franks
3.
Paris Opera Ballet
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The Paris Opera Ballet is an integral part of the Paris Opera and the oldest national ballet company. Together with the Moscow Bolshoi Ballet and the London Royal Ballet it is regarded as one of the three most preeminent ballet companies in the world, since August 2016 the company has been under the direction of Aurélie Dupont, the Directrice de la Danse. The ballet company consists of 154 dancers, among them 17 Danseurs Étoiles, the principal dancer give 180 dance performances each year, primarily at the Palais Garnier. Just as prestigious as the Paris Opera Ballet is its dance school and its former pupils have won a record of 20 Benois de la Danse awards. The school celebrated its tercentennial in 2013, the competition for admission to both institutions is extremely fierce. To be admitted there, to pass the competitive examinations in May. As its Ballet School is excellent and graduates many young dancers who are or the most part French, the Paris Opera has had many different official names during its long history but since 1994 has been called the Opéra National de Paris. The Paris Opera Ballet had its origins in the earlier dance institutions, traditions, of particular importance were the series of comédies-ballets created by Molière with, among others, the choreographers and composers Pierre Beauchamps and Jean-Baptiste Lully. The first was Les Fâcheux in 1661 and the most important, many of these were also performed by Molières company at the public Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris, which was later to become the first permanent home of the opera company and the opera ballet. Also in 1661, Louis XIV had founded the Académie Royale de Danse in an effort to improve the quality of instruction for court entertainments. Members of the academy, as well as the teachers who were certified by it, and their students, participated in the creation of the ballets for the court, Molière. In 1680, Beauchamps became the chancellor of the Académie Royale de Danse, although the Académie Royale de Danse and the Opera were closely connected, the two institutions remained separate, and the former disappeared with the fall of the monarchy in 1789. On 28 June 1669, Louis XIV granted a privilege to the poet Pierre Perrin giving him a monopoly to form an academy for the performance of opera in French. In 1672, Lully purchased Perrins privilege and also obtained new letters patent limiting the use of musicians and this work consisted primarily of excerpts from Lullys prior court ballets connected with new entrées choreographed by des Brosses. A crucial difference, however, from the court ballets was that the members of the court no longer participated. Lullys next production, Cadmus et Hermione, the first tragédie lyrique, the ballets for these works were created by Beauchamps, des Brosses, and dOlivet. It was he, and not des Brosses or Beauchamps, whom Lully engaged for the ballets ordinaires and it was also dOlivet who composed the ballet of the old men in Thesée, of the baneful dreams in Atys, and of the tremblers in Isis. This last was composed solely of pantomimic gestures by men seized with cold, initially the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet were all male
4.
Zizi Jeanmaire
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Zizi Jeanmaire is a French ballet dancer and widow of renowned dancer and choreographer Roland Petit. She became famous in the 1950s after playing the role in the ballet Carmen, produced in London in 1949. Born Renée Marcelle Jeanmaire in Paris, she met her future husband and she joined his company, Petits ballets de Paris in 1949. In 1954, they married, and their successful shows put her on the road to stardom and this led to a brief stint in Hollywood, appearing in the musicals Hans Christian Andersen and Anything Goes. After that, she concentrated on ballet, producing more than 60 shows with Petit, from the 1960s on, she also had a career in music with such hits as Mon truc en plumes. Her notoriety and fame garnered her more attention, even at fashion shows. At one fashion show for Yves Saint Laurent in 1967, Jeanmaire was prominently seated alongside Elsa Martinelli, Françoise Hardy, almost 50 years later, Vogue magazine would look back at Jeanmaire and her peers as representing a guidepost of fashion week celebrity culture. She and Petit had one daughter, Valentine Petit, a dancer, Jeanmaire is mentioned in the lyrics of the song by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Nothing is Sacred, a track on their album, Timeless Flight. Zizi Jeanmaire with Gérard Mannoni, Paris, Assouline,2002,147 pages, ISBN 2-84323-389-5 A Tribute to Gainsbourg, Zizi Jeanmaire interprète French Zizi Jeanmaire at the Internet Movie Database
5.
Serge Lifar
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Serge Lifar –15 December 1986, Lausanne, Switzerland) was a French ballet dancer and choreographer of Ukrainian origin, famous as one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century. Not only a dancer, Lifar was also a choreographer, director, writer, theoretician about dance, Lifar was born in Kiev, Ukraine. His year of birth is shown as 1904. He was the pupil of Bronislava Nijinska in Kiev, in 1921 he left the Soviet Union and was noticed by Serge Diaghilev, who sent him to Turin in order to improve his technique with Enrico Cecchetti. He made his debut at the Ballets Russes in 1923, where he became the dancer in 1925. Lifar was considered the successor to Nijinsky in the Ballets Russes and he was cast at the age of 21 opposite Tamara Karsavina in Nijinskas Roméo et Juliette, Karsavina was twice his age. Lifar gave the company a new strength and purpose, initiating the rebirth of ballet in France, as part of his effort to revitalize dance, Lifar thought the basic principles of ballet—specifically the five positions of the feet—denied mobility for the dancer. He codified two additional positions, known as the sixth and seventh positions, with the feet turned in, during his three decades as director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, Lifar led the company through the turbulent times of World War II and the German occupation of France. He is credited for saving many Jewish and other minority dancers from the Nazi concentration camps during World War II, ironically, after the war, Lifar was forced to go on leave while accusations of being a collaborator were investigated. During this three-year period, Balanchine was hired to replace him, returning to his former position, Lifar brought the Paris Opéra Ballet to America and performed to full houses at the New York City Center. Audiences were enthusiastic and had great admiration for the company of dancers and he undoubtedly influenced Yvette Chauviré, Janine Charrat, and Roland Petit. In 1958, he was rejected by the Paris Ballet theater workers, on 30 March 1958, at age 52, Lifar faced off against the 72-year-old impresario George de Cuevas in a duel in France. The duel was precipitated by an argument over changes to Black and White, Lifar had his face slapped in public after insisting that he retained the rights to Black and White. Lifar sent his seconds to Cuevas who refused to extend an apology, as duels had been technically outlawed in the 17th Century, the time and location of the duel were not disclosed to the public. In 1977 the Paris Opéra Ballet devoted an evening to his choreography. He died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1986, aged 81, editions Sauret published his memoirs, titled Les Mémoires dIcare, posthumously in 1993. The title references one of his greatest roles in the ballet Icare, the story of the ballet is based on the ancient Greek myth of Icarus, whose father Daedalus builds him a pair of artificial wings. Disobeying his fathers orders, Icarus flies too close to the sun, the Serge Lifar Foundation was set up on 23 August 1989 by Lifars companion, Countess Lillian Ahlefeldt-Laurvig
6.
Henri Dutilleux
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Henri Dutilleux was a French composer active mainly in the second half of the 20th century. His work, which garnered acclaim, followed in the tradition of Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Albert Roussel and Olivier Messiaen. Some of his compositions include a piano sonata, two symphonies, the Cello Concerto Tout un monde lointain, the Violin Concerto Larbre des songes. Some of these are regarded as masterpieces of 20th-century classical music, writing in the New York Times, Paul Griffiths said, Mr Dutilleux’s position in French music was proudly solitary. Between Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez in age, he was affected by either. But his voice, marked by sensuously handled harmony and color, was his own, in addition to his activities as a composer, he worked as the Head of Music Production for Radio France for 18 years. Henri Dutilleux was born on 22 January 1916 in Angers, Maine-et-Loire and he was the great-grandson of the painter Constant Dutilleux and of the composer Julien Koszul. He was also a cousin of the mathematician Jean-Louis Koszul, as a young man he studied harmony, counterpoint and piano with Victor Gallois at the Douai Conservatory before leaving for the Paris Conservatoire. There, between 1933 and 1938, he attended the classes of Jean and Noël Gallon, Henri Büsser and he studied music at the Conservatoire de Paris in the same class as Henri Betti, Paul Bonneau and Louiguy. Dutilleux won the Prix de Rome in 1938 for his cantata Lanneau du roi and he worked for a year as a medical orderly in the army and then returned to Paris in 1940, where he worked as a pianist, arranger and music teacher. In 1942 he conducted the choir of the Paris Opera, Dutilleux worked as Head of Music Production for Radio France from 1945 to 1963. He served as Professor of Composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris from 1961 to 1970 and he was appointed to the staff of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in 1970 and was composer in residence at Tanglewood in 1995 and 1998. His students included the French composers Gérard Grisey and Francis Bayer, the Canadian composers Alain Gagnon and Jacques Hétu, the British composer Kenneth Hesketh, invited by Walter Fink, he was the 16th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2006. For many years, Dutilleux had a studio on Île Saint-Louis and he died on 22 May 2013 in Paris, aged 97 and was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery. Dutilleuxs music extends the legacies of earlier French composers such as Debussy and Ravel but is clearly influenced by Béla Bartók. Among his favourite pieces, he mentioned Beethovens late string quartets and his attitude toward serialism was more ambiguous. As an independent composer, Dutilleux always refused to be associated with any school, rather, his works merge the traditions of earlier composers and post-World War II innovations and translate them into his own idiosyncratic style. His music also contains distant echoes of jazz as can be heard in the double bass strings at the very beginning of his First Symphony
7.
Serge Gainsbourg
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Serge Gainsbourg was a French singer, songwriter, pianist, film composer, poet, painter, screenwriter, writer, actor, and director. His lyrical work incorporated a vast amount of word play to hoodwink the listener, often for humorous, provocative. Common types of play in his songs include mondegreen, onomatopoeia, rhyme, spoonerism, dysphemism, paraprosdokian. Through the course of his career, Gainsbourg wrote over 550 songs, since his death, Gainsbourgs music has reached legendary stature in France. He has also gained a following in the English-speaking world. Born in Paris, France, Gainsbourg was the son of Jewish Ukrainian migrants, Joseph Ginsburg and Olga, who fled to Paris after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Joseph Ginsburg was a trained musician whose profession was playing the piano in cabarets and casinos, he taught his children - Gainsbourg. Gainsbourgs childhood was affected by the occupation of France by Germany in World War II. The identifying yellow star Jews were required to wear haunted Gainsbourg, during the occupation, the Jewish Ginsburg family was able to make their way from Paris to Limoges, traveling under false papers. Limoges was in the Zone libre under the administration of the collaborationist Vichy government, after the war, Gainsbourg obtained work teaching music and drawing in a school outside of Paris, in Mesnil-Le-Roi. The school was set up under the auspices of local rabbis, here Gainsbourg heard the accounts of Nazi persecution and genocide, stories that resonated for Gainsbourg far into the future. Before he was 30 years old, Gainsbourg was a disillusioned painter, Gainsbourg changed his first name to Serge, feeling that this was representative of his Russian background and because, as Jane Birkin relates, Lucien reminded him of a hairdressers assistant. He chose Gainsbourg as his last name, in homage to the English painter Thomas Gainsborough and he married Elisabeth Lize Levitsky on 3 November 1951 and divorced in 1957. He married a second time on 7 January 1964, to Françoise-Antoinette Béatrice Pancrazzi and he divorced Béatrice in February 1966. In late 1967 he had a short but ardent love affair with Brigitte Bardot, to whom he dedicated the song, in mid-1968 Gainsbourg fell in love with the younger English singer and actress Jane Birkin, whom he met during the shooting of the film Slogan. Their relationship lasted over a decade, in 1971 they had a daughter, the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg. Although many sources state that they were married, according to their daughter Charlotte this was not the case. Birkin remembers the beginning of her affair with Gainsbourg, he first took her to a nightclub, then to a transvestite club, Birkin left Gainsbourg when pregnant with her third daughter Lou by the film director Jacques Doillon
