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DTSTAMP:20260717T235616Z
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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260909
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20260717
DESCRIPTION:Sep 9-19\, 2026\nIn 1925\, the French went bananas for the 19-y
 ear-old St. Louis native Josephine and her danse sauvage (the banana tutu 
 came later). Two decades on\, they pinned her with the Croix de Guerre and
  the Rosette de la Résistance for high-yield cloak-and-dagger services ag
 ainst the Third Reich\, rendered entirely at her substantial personal expe
 nse. But in 1969\, officialdom lifted nary a finger when the new owner of 
 her chateau in the Dordogne kicked her to the curb with her Rainbow Tribe 
 of a dozen adopted children from around the globe. Que faire? Madame had e
 arned and burned through a veritable fortune. In a fairy-tale ending\, Pri
 ncess Grace installed the unhoused diva in a spare villa on the Côte d’
 Azur for her remaining six years of happily ever after. A half century on\
 , with her induction among the secular saints of the Panthéon\, Baker ent
 ered the realm of myth. Was she a second Joan of Arc? The Real Thing after
  that fraudster train-wreck Mata Hari? Did she blaze the trail for Jessye 
 Norman\, who\, draped in the Tricolore\, electrified a global audience in 
 the high hundreds of millions\, projecting La Marseillaise to the heavens 
 from the Place de la Concorde on the Bastille Day bicentennial? Baker’s 
 relevance to issues of race\, colonialism\, and the objectification of the
  exotic Other (“too dark\, too thin”) will keep hives of killer-bee po
 lemicists on attack for decades to come. With Perle Noire\, the ageless en
 fant terrible director Peter Sellars and the incandescent soprano Julia Bu
 llock sublimate their understanding of her history into performance. Rathe
 r than “recreate” her signature numbers\, they deconstruct them in com
 munion with the multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey and a sextet of jazz p
 layers for whom spontaneity and improv are a way of life. There’s connec
 tive text by the poet Claudia Rankine. Since an original run at the Ojai F
 estival in California a decade ago\, Perle Noire has continued to evolve. 
 It’s tempting to envision this bold experiment in the cabaret intimacy o
 f Montmartre’s Chez Michou\, once the haunt of Piaf and Brel. But how it
  will play at that Gilded Age pantheon to operatic excess known as the Pal
 ais Garnier? And as the gala season opener yet\, with the resident orchest
 ra\, ballet ensemble\, and chorus off in limbo? Color us curious.
LOCATION:Paris Opéra\, Amphithéâtre Olivier Messiaen\, Pl. de la Bastill
 e\, 75012 Paris\, France
SUMMARY:Tyshawn Sorey\, Black Pearl: meditation on Josephine
URL;VALUE=TEXT:https://airmail.news/arts-intel/events/tyshawn-sorey-black-p
 earl-meditation-on-josephine
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