I love France. I love the people, the villages, the churches we sing in, and oh yeah, can’t forget to give homage to the baguette. That lovely soft, slightly salty soft center with the golden brown crispy crust.
Today is Sunday, a free day forus, and I just had coffees with Linda, Kris, Ginna and her friends from Canada that have joined us on this leg of the trip. We sat at a lovely cafe near the carousel just outside of the church were Napoleon & Joseph Bonaparte attended while they lived in Autun for a few months.
Heather and I had a wonderful surprise the other day when we met up with our host family from Neuss, Germany after our first concert at the Cathedral. They were in town for the wedding of their nephew about 10 km outside of Autun and were staying here for the week. They took us to lunch the next day where we dined on Bourgeoning de Canard (duck in a burgundy wine sauce, a local fare) and Crepes fommage (swiss cheese & egg crepes). We were able to catch up about their family since it has been a couple of years since were stayed with them last .
After a morning of rehearsals yesterday with the other singers for the Faure Requiem, we left for our concert last night in a village named Perreuil, about a 45 minute drive from Autun.
In 1944 Perreuil was liberated from Germany in WWII during
an American air strike when an American pilot flying a Thunderbolt P47 was shot down over the village. A monument was erected to commemorate and pay respect to this pilot, Lt Leroy Saunders of Connecticut. Our bus stopped to pick up the mayor and other town dignitaries so that a bouquet of flowers could be laid at the monument site. When we placed the flowers, we sang a touching verse of “America the Beautiful” in 4 part harmony.
We were then treated to dinner where we were served a wonderful aperitif of the local area of creme de cassis and white wine as a toast followed by jamon & a salami, bread, and omlette with pork as the entree. It is tradition to sprinkle a little red wine vinegar on your eggs which most of the Ensemble tried. I get violently ill from eating eggs, so I had to abstain. A course of Camembert cheese followed and then some lovely pastries with creme fresche and coffee. Now we had to sing…
And sing we did. It was a fun show – Jordan basically programmed music from all of our CDs, so variety was the theme for the evening. I think the best part was when Kim came out in the 2nd half of the show in her traditional Hawaiian dress with the ipu. The reaction of the crowd was filled with ooo’s and ah’s and lots of whispering. We ended our show with a sing along of “Jesus the Light of the World” with great participation. We were presented with a bouquet of flowers, a couple of bottles of wine from the local vineyard and a copy of the town’s newspaper that had a 2 page spread on The Rose Ensemble and another 2 pages about Minnesota – talk about educating your audience!
As usual, we are being so well received in Europe.