Posts under Culture

French Music - Cleopâtre

Posted by Chanda
Sep
30
2009

One of the most popular musicals right now in France, Switzerland and Belgium is Cleopâtre: La Dernière Reine d’Egypte (Cleopatra: The Last Queen of Egypt).  Having opened at the Palais des Sports in Paris in January 2009, the show has been on tour throughout these three countries since May 2009 and will be returning to Paris at the beginning of 2010 for an extended showing.  Cleopatra is played by Sofia Essaidi who was a contestant and finalist on the highly successful Star Academy (France’s version of The One: Making a Music Star) back in 2003 when I was living in Paris.  She was born in Casablanca, Morocco and was considered by many to be the best singer and student on the show that year.  After releasing a well-received album Mon cabaret in 2005, she fought hard to get the role of Cleopatra and has since been touring with the musical produced by theater director and choreographer Kamel Ouali, who was also the head choreographer for Star Academy.  Cleopâtre is the biggest musical comedy that has ever been made in France.

Act I begins in 51 B.C. upon the death of Cleopatra’s father.  Cleopatra inherits a huge empire - the land of the Egyptian pharaohs.  Her brother does everything, including an attempted assassination, to take the throne away from her and succeeds; but she is determined to get it back.  The 17-year-old runs away with her most loyal priestess and with her charm, convinces Caesar, who was getting ready to invade her empire, to give her the throne of Egypt.  She stays in Rome, much to the dismay of the Roman senators who see her as a threat.  A few years later, Caesar is assassinated and Cleopatra immediately returns to Egypt.

With Caesar dead in Act II, Octavian and Marcus Antonius decide to split the world where one gets the West and the other the East.  As part of the agreement, Marcus Antonius takes Octavian’s sister as his wife.  At the same time, back in Egypt, Cleopatra gains the respect of her people after setting them free and is at the height of her glory.  She is a brilliant politician and demands an alliance with Marcus Antonius.  The two become involved in a passionate and very public romance which is not at all viewed well by the Romans.  Octavian demands that Marcus Antonius choose between his sister and Cleopatra.  Marcus Antonius chooses Cleopatra and war begins.  The two lovers try to fight Octavian’s warriors, but the story ends tragically.

The soundtrack album has been on sale since August 2008 and features 25 songs, short clips of which you can listen to on the official website. There are also links on the site to buy the album, which reached the 11th spot on the French music charts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy1NtK5ShrM

For more information on the show, tour dates and reservations, you can check out the official Cleopâtre website http://cleopatre.nrj.fr/index.html.

 
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Writing a Letter in French

Posted by Chanda
Sep
28
2009

Do you ever need to write a letter in French either for work, school or pleasure?  Well, today, I’m going to try to help you out a bit with this task.  First, let’s talk about a formal/business letter.  Let’s say you need to write a letter to a company asking for information.  You can put your company name and address in the top, left-hand corner.  You place the city you are writing from, a comma, and the current date in the top, right-hand corner.  About four lines down you write the name and address of the place you’re writing to again in the top, right-hand corner.  If you are writing in response or in relation to anything that has a reference number, place that reference number aligned to the left after the words “Ref.” or “Objet“.  Another four lines down, you write “Madame,” (if you’re writing to a woman) or “Monsieur,” (if you’re writing to a man) to the left.  You can write the name of the person before the comma if you know who you are writing to.  If you don’t know whether the person receiving the letter is a man or woman, you can write “Monsieur,Madame,”
Then, you indent once and begin the body of your letter.  After you finish the body of the letter, you write one of the ready-made long closings (formule de politesse) just like a paragraph.  Finally, you sign the letter aligned to the right.  If you’d like you can include your job position/written name aligned to the right just above your signature.   And that’s it!  Your letter might look something like this:

Club de Français
105, rue de la Gaité
75014 PARIS

Monsieur, Madame,

Voulez-vous avoir l’obligeance de m’envoyer une documentation sur votre club (cotisation, programme d’activités, etc.) à l’adresse suivante :

M. Sylvain BOUCHON
15, rue d’Espagne
34000 MONTPELLIER

Avec mes remerciements, veuillez agréer, Monsieur, Madame, l’expression de mes sentiments distingués.

Sylvain BOUCHON
Sylvain Bouchon

Here are some different closings you can use.  They pretty much just mean “Yours Faithfully” or “Sincerely”:
Veuillez agréer, Monsieur, l’expression de mes sentiments distingués (the most common)
Je vous prie de croire, Monsieur, à l’expression de ma vive sympathie.
(replace Monsieur with Madame in the above if writing to a woman instead of a man)

Do any of you know of another formule de politesse?  Please share with us in a comment!

 
Posted under Culture, Grammar, Vocabulary
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French Cuisine - Mousse au chocolat

Posted by Chanda
Sep
21
2009

Today I’m going to give you a recipe in French for chocolate mousse.

Ingrédients:
200 g de chocolat noir à pâtisser (around 2 cups)
50 g de beurre (around 3 1/2 tbsp)
3 jaunes d’oeufs
5 blancs d’oeufs
125 g de sucre en poudre (just a little under 1 cup)

1. Dans une casserole au bain-marie, faites fondre le chocolat en morceaux avec le beurre.
2. Cassez les oeufs dans un saladier, en séparant les blancs des jaunes.
3. Battez au fouet à main les jaunes avec le sucre jusqu’à ce que le mélange blanchisse.
4. Ajoutez ensuite le chocolat fondu et mélangez bien à l’aide d’une cuillère en bois.
5. Battez en neige très ferme les blancs d’oeufs.
6. Incorporez-les délicatement dans le saladier avec une cuillère en bois, en soulevant toujours le mélange de bas en haut, afin de ne pas faire retomber les blancs battus.
7. Laissez reposer plusieurs heures au réfrigérateur avant de déguster.

If you have any questions, please let us know in a comment.  Bon courage!

 
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French Cuisine - Fromage

Posted by Chanda
Aug
31
2009

A few things happened to me when I lived in France that made me begin to understand one of the major points of French culture - le fromage!  First of all, as a student who had to go out and get her own groceries for lunch, one of my first excursions was to a supermarket and the cheese aisle was about as long as the snacks aisle in the US (not just Roquefort, Camembert and Brie).  I later was told that there are over 1000 different kinds of cheese produced in France.  That’s a lot of cheese!  There are soft cheeses, hard cheeses, blues, goat’s cheeses (chèvre), herbed/garlic (Boursin) cheeses and much, much more.
Fromage

After about six months of living in France, I was invited to a friend’s house for lunch.  After the main course, out came the hostess with a large, round dish with several different cheeses on it.  My friend told me to take some of whichever I liked or to try them all.  So, I grabbed my knife and was just about to cut off the bottom of one of the cheese triangles, when his father waved me off and said, “On ne se coupe pas le fromage comme ça!” (You don’t cut cheese like that!).  After seeing how red I got in the face, he quickly laughed it off and said not to worry and explained to me that you are supposed to cut cheese in a way that everyone gets an equal part.  So instead of left/right (or just hacking the point off), you should cut the wedge from the top to the bottom.  In other words, with the large end of the wedge at the top, you cut a slice off vertically.  He then proceeded to explain the different taste of each of the cheeses and took great pleasure in getting me to try them all and discuss them.  Each different kind of cheese is cut in a different way, but always with the same principle behind the cut- that each person basically gets an equal part and for the cheese not to look demolished as it is served again and again after each meal on the cheese platter.  Custom is to pass the cheese platter around the table with each person carefully cutting a portion from each type of cheese and placing their portions on their own plate to eat them once everyone has been served.  You normally won’t see French people reaching to the center of the table to get more and more cheese.  If someone does want more, they usually take the platter to serve themselves more or ask someone to pass them the platter.
Years later when I again lived in France, a friend of mine would often invite me out to dinner and would always make a point to tell me to close my eyes and savor the cheese served after the meal and tell him if I could taste the grass the cheese-making animals had eaten prior to getting milked.  What???  Can you actually taste the grass in the cheese?  Is this true or is this just exaggerative French people for you again, I remember asking myself.  Needless to say, I never could taste the grass.  It just tasted like cheese to me, albeit delicious.

There’s a very complete and interesting website about French cheese that I found in English.  Take a look when you have time.  http://www.frencheese.co.uk/

 
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French Music - Chérie FM

Posted by Chanda
Aug
27
2009

Okay, so some people think I’m a bit geeky, but I love to listen to Chérie FM!  The French music they play is just the kind of music I came to love as a student in Paris.  And the rest of the English-language music they play (easy listening/pop) is what I grew up on in Iowa.  And it’s great because even though I’m not in France I can listen to it whenever I want as they stream it over the Internet at http://www.cheriefm.fr/.
If you go to the website, you can read interesting music-related news or entertainment gossip, download podcasts, play games, get information on concerts and theater events and even buy tickets, take part in contests, check out your horoscope, answer poll questions, get advice from Amelie and watch videos and interviews of various musicians and if you click on Ecouter in the top right corner, you can listen to the live stream.

 
Posted under Music
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