We all love looking down on a tiny town model (plan relief). This is nothing new.
Brighton Gazette 8 September 1825 (Courtesy of British Newspaper Archive)
Paris comes to Brighton
Entertainment
Brighton’s French Music Festival, 1881 (2)
Just a year ago, in my blog about Brighton’s 1881 Music Festival, I stated: “A great part of the success of the Festival does seem to have been due to the excellent organisation by Chérifel de la Grave.”
Should I have been more alive to this newspaper report?
The national press went a little further in criticism of the practical arrangements of the Festival:
Were there flaws in the organisation? Well, the chief conductor of the participating Orphéon from Châlons-sur-Marne certainly thought so. His 50-page account of his band’s trip to Brighton is very revealing.
Brighton, 14 November 1827
On this day, exactly 193 years ago, a dapper 46-year-old Frenchman attended an elegant ball in the Assembly Rooms of the Old Ship Hotel, Brighton. What a splendid affair. The rooms had recently been redecorated by Frederick Crace following his successful work at the Royal Pavilion. The officers of the 52nd Infantry and the 7th Hussars were in their dress uniform (although the latter disgraced themselves by dancing while wearing their swords). The ladies were magnificent in their ballgowns and jewels. Even elderly Mrs Fitzherbert graced the event with her presence.
Hospitality is the fertiliser of the soul
In 2002, when the organisers of the Golden Jubilee Party in Regency Square (of which this blogger was one) invited the Orchestre d’Harmonie de Dieppe to play, they did not realise that they were following a long tradition.
In 2002, when the organisers of the Golden Jubilee Party in Regency Square (of which this blogger was one) invited the Orchestre d’Harmonie de Dieppe to play, they did not realise that they were following a long tradition.
Brighton’s French Festival of Music (1)
Imagine the grand sight of two thousand musicians and choristers in “a daylight procession [starting] from the Pavilion at six in the evening and having marched with music and banners along the Kings-road to Brunswick-terrace, will return by the same route to the Pavilion grounds.” (Daily Telegraph and Courier).
What the advert above does not highlight is that almost each one of these two thousand performers was a Frenchman (with a few French-speaking Swiss and Belgians in the mix for good measure). Conference delegates descending on Brighton en masse is nothing new, for this event took place in 1881.
The Laughing Onion
In 2014, the following announcement appeared in The Argus:
The Stage Thursday 20 April 1967 (c) British Newspaper Archive
The announcement is deceptively bland. It gives very little clue to the life of this charismatic man, chanteur and chef/owner of the Laughing Onion Restaurant in Kemp Town.
If you read no further, watch Stephen Matthew’s wonderful short video about Jean-Jacques
Jean-Jacques looked every bit the French pin-up ‘boy’ of the time and spent 18 months in the early 1960s performing in Britain. Continue reading
La divine Sarah
Sarah Bernhardt aged 20 in 1884
On Wednesday 29th and Thursday 30th June 1881, the ‘Divine Sarah’ trod the boards of the Theatre Royal Brighton. With a name like Bernhardt, can she justifiably be included as French? Continue reading
French Brighton 