ataraxia in paris spleen

We are inspired by poetry, mainly the one that transforms the most turbid and tormented reality, the one of the wretches, the freaks, the buskers and the buffoons in a sort of lyrical revelation. Two years ago we started exploring an historical period and environment that have always appealed to us : the 'cabarets macabres' and fun fairs of the beginning of the XXth century in Paris. We felt the urge to turn into music the universe of Atget, an anomalous artist who, unlike his contemporaries, felt the wish, through his photographic objective, to capture the state of grace of some places, persons and situations that till that moment had always been considered of scarce interest. And who, better than Baudelaire, has managed to portray that peculiar universe within his verses ? "The spleen of Paris" has been our guide and some of its lines have become the lyrics of our songs. Carrying out an accurate research about the 'ghost cabarets' that animated the nights of Boulevard de Clichy, we disappeared into a nocturnal environment both gloomy and sparkling of innatural colours, a distorted dimension where each mask, drama, jest and tear turned into a grotesque and amplified representation of life. Men, dogs, exotic perfumes, acrobats in decay, green-eyed enchantresses, cloud sellers, heavenly places come into existence behind the threadbare fabric of a torn curtain rather than on the unnailed planks of a worm-eaten stage. Identifying ourselves with the artists of that time, we have written a collection of songs that could have been played at the beginning of the XXth century in the Cabaret of Heaven rather than in the Tavern of Crooks. Thanks to the sound of bandonéons, musettes, trombones, violins, big-drums and cymbals and the dramatic and guttural voice of our singer, we have sung Baudelaire who, in his turn, had sung Paris of the imaginative and under-privileged artists of Montmartre. Anyway, this is not the first time we set to music the verses of some decadent French poet like Mallarmé, Apollinaire or Baudelaire himself helped by Nicolas R. who, since several years, help us setting our performances. This music show features four musicians and a performer who bring back to life the grotesque, bitter and irriverent words of "Le Spleen de Paris".

"Vous n'avez pas de verres de couleur, de verres roses, rouges et bleus, de vitres magiques de paradis? Impudent que vous êtes!"
C.B.