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1000 results for “Aix_in_pce”
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𝗧-𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗿𝘁 𝗲𝗻 𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗯𝗿𝗼𝗲𝗸 𝘃𝗮𝗻 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗘𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗴𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻
Nadat zaterdag botten van de vermiste Franse peuter Emile werden gevonden, zijn nu ook zijn T-shirt, schoenen en onderbroek gevonden. Dat zeiden politie en justitie in Aix-en-Provence vanavond tijdens een persconferentie.
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𝗧-𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗿𝘁 𝗲𝗻 𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗯𝗿𝗼𝗲𝗸 𝘃𝗮𝗻 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗘𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗴𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻
Nadat zaterdag botten van de vermiste Franse peuter Emile werden gevonden, zijn nu ook zijn T-shirt, schoenen en onderbroek gevonden. Dat zeiden politie en justitie in Aix-en-Provence vanavond tijdens een persconferentie.
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𝗧-𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗿𝘁 𝗲𝗻 𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗯𝗿𝗼𝗲𝗸 𝘃𝗮𝗻 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗘𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗲 𝗴𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻
Nadat zaterdag botten van de vermiste Franse peuter Emile werden gevonden, zijn nu ook zijn T-shirt, schoenen en onderbroek gevonden. Dat zeiden politie en justitie in Aix-en-Provence vanavond tijdens een persconferentie.
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Digital #Neolatinists, here's a #CfP for you: The Digital Committee of #IANLS invites abstracts for papers for special sessions on Digital Technology and Neo-Latin Studies at the 2025 IANLS congress in Aix-en-Provence. It would be great to have as many submissions as possible! Deadline is 15 April. The link to the CfP: https://ianls.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Call-for-papers-Aix_Digital-Committee.pdf
@neolatin @dh #digitalhumanities @renaissance
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First Ladies at the MET: Ethel Smyth & Kaija Saariaho
In 1903, Ethel Smyth debuted at the Metropolitan Opera New York with her opera Der Wald, as the first female composer ever. One hundred and thirteen years later, Kaija Saariaho followed in her footsteps with L’Amour de loin. Recently, Der Wald was released on CD. Saariaho died this summer; the MET has scheduled Innocence in 2025-26. This opera had its Dutch premiere in October.
There are people with whom you feel a deep connection, even though you have never met them. Such a person is Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), whose magnificent opera The Wreckers was performed at the 2022 Glyndebourne Opera Festival. The CD recording of this opera so enraptured me in 1994 that I immediately made attempts to have it performed in the Netherlands. Fruitlessly, as I wrote before.
Because…, well. Smyth was a woman, and even long after her death that still proved to be a major handicap, as I myself experienced many times. As a child, for instance, I was not allowed to join the local brass band – because I was a girl. When I was finally admitted, the conductor constantly found new ways to humiliate and/or ignore me. One day I decided I’d had enough. I threw my instrument at his feet and left, never to return. A century before, Smyth had resolutely snatched all parts from the lecterns when a conductor refused to perform her opera Der Wald in full. This made us soulmates.
Struggle to get Der Wald staged
Speaking of the setbacks Smyth faced, previous to the world premiere of Der Wald in 1903 she said: ‘The life of any composer who values his art more than his peace of mind is one long struggle from beginning to end, especially if you are a woman musician. The persistent and ever-increasing pressure on body, mind and soul, make it so hard to bear.’
‘I have exceptional physical fitness. I golf, I ride, I do all outdoor sports. Otherwise, the disappointments, discouragements and inevitable difficulties would have destroyed my health long ago. I managed to win the race. It seems to me that the hour has struck for women’s work in the music world. Any woman after me will find it easier because of my pioneering journey over this barren road.’
Unfortunately, her assessment turned out to be a bit too optimistic, as only in recent years more attention is paid to the work of female composers, especially thanks to the #MeToo movement. These days some male composers even complain that composition commissions mostly go to (young) women. Looking at concert programmes, however, one sees that they are still dominated by men.
Smyth had to fight for her music throughout her life, and the world premiere of Der Wald was no exception. The idea came from writer-philosopher Henry Brewster (1850-1908), her only male lover ever, whom she invariably called H.B. In 1898, they had written the libretto together for her first opera, the also German-language Fantasio. Brewster had even asked her to marry him, but with her characteristic decisiveness, she replied: ‘I wonder why it is so much easier for me to love my own sex more passionately than yours.’ Nevertheless they remained intimate friends until Brewster’s untimely death in 1908.
No care for mortal joys or sorrows
His synopsis of Der Wald immediately appealed to Smyth. She described the story as ‘a short, poignant tragedy which for a moment interrupts the tranquil rites of the Spirits of the Forest’, while the real story was ‘the eternal march of Nature – Nature that enwraps human destiny and recks nothing of mortal joys and sorrows’.
Not surprisingly, the opera is set in a forest. The wood spirits sing of their own immortality in contrast to the short lifespan of humans and animals. The young couple Röschen and Heinrich are to be wed and ask the blessing of the forest, but cruel Iolanthe goes all out to take Heinrich away from his sweetheart. The latter, however, remains steadfast even when Iolanthe threatens him with death. He snaps at her: ‘Then take my life, thou damned witch, and hell take thy soul!’ Whereupon Iolanthe kills Heinrich and Röschen throws herself dying in his arms. Unperturbed the forest spirits resume their rituals.
Powerful score spiced with pinches of Wagner and Debussy
The score of the one-act opera is packed with powerful choral and orchestral passages in Smyth’s signature style. This is rooted in romanticism and laced with pinches of Wagner, Debussy and English folklore. The overwhelming melodic richness and the varied, well-structured set-up are striking. When things get tense, Smyth doesn’t hesitate to virtually shut down the orchestral apparatus, allowing the soloists to convey the dramatic content even more empathically. In more light-hearted passages, we hear preliminary echoes of William Walton’s Façade.
Despite the necessary hurdles, Smyth managed to get Der Wald performed at the Royal Theatre in Berlin. The world premiere on 9 April 1902 was received somewhat coolly by critics, but audiences responded positively, becoming increasingly enthusiastic at the next three performances. In July, the opera was also staged at Covent Garden in an English translation, generating a resounding success. Smyth wrote in her memoirs: ‘It was the only blazing triumph I ever had.’
Der Wald first opera by a woman composer at the MET
Determined to get Der Wald performed in America too, Smyth took the night boat from London to Paris to meet Maurice Grau, manager of the MET. She arrived at 7am, called Grau at his hotel and got on the ferry back at 11am – with a contract. The handwritten document is preserved in Berlin’s State Library. We read that Smyth was to receive 40 British pounds for two performances and 20 pounds for each subsequent production. ‘You are certainly a businesswoman,’ Grau had observed. Still, the fee seems on the low side by modern standards: 40 pounds then are roughly equivalent to 6300 pounds now, somewhat over seven thousand euros.
Ethel Smyth, portrait by John Singer Sargent‘Determined to get Der Wald performed in America too, Smyth took the night boat from London to Paris to meet Maurice Grau, manager of the MET. She arrived at 7am, called Grau at his hotel and got on the ferry back at 11am – with a contract.’
TweetThat the MET would bring an opera by a woman caused quite a stir in the US. Months before the premiere, the occasion was covered in every conceivable media outlet. Smyth herself travelled to New York and gave many interviews. In 2021 American pianist and musicologist Amy Zigler managed to dig up as many as 102 articles, published in 21 different states, ranging from previews, interviews, reviews to simple announcements. A striking constant is that Smyth’s womanhood is explicitly stressed, as well as her connections with the European aristocracy (she was friends with Empress Eugénie and Queen Victoria, among others) and the American upper class (John Singer Sargent drew her portrait in 1901).
US premiere resounding public success
The premiere – in the original German version – on 11 March 1903, conducted by Grau, was a resounding success. The audience rewarded Smyth with a thunderous applause that lasted over 10 minutes, bombarding her with flowers when she appeared on stage. However, reviews from New York critics were extremely negative. ‘The case is one of vaulting ambition and a general incompetency to write anything beyond the most obvious commonplaces’, observes The New York Times. The Sun denounces its ‘vigour and masculinity’, while the Evening World calls the music ‘distinctly unfeminine, it lacks sweetness and grace of expression’. – So precisely the ambitious and powerful nature of her music is held against Smyth.
Her skilful orchestration is reluctantly mentioned at times, invariably followed by the accusation that any melodic ingenuity would be missing, and the music uninspired and without passion. Remarkably often, too, Smyth is called ‘girl’, even though she was already 44 years old. Almost a century later, little had changed: when I started working as a music journalist in the mid-nineties, it struck me that in the sporadic articles featuring women composers, they were invariably referred to by their first names. – A highly effective way to make a person seem small and insignificant.
1903 New York – misogynous and provincial
Today New York may count as the enlightened epicentre of the Western world, a century ago it was rather provincial; its critics had a misogynous disposition and listened with firm ear flaps on. In stark contrast, reviewers in the other 20 states praised Smyth’s overpowering, confident style. The Indianapolis Journal mentions the ‘wealth of musical ideas and a skill of construction which result in a strongly rounded whole’; the Topeka State Journal speaks of ‘a work of refinement, finish and musicality’, while the Telegraph calls her harmonic palette ‘masterful and convincing’, praising her ‘excellent sense of timbre. There is no sparing of brass, and there is no mincing of the means that speak the language of musical passion’.
Smyth herself faced only the reviews from New York, but where years later I still get vicariously furious, she did not let herself off the hook: ‘Der Wald is certainly not fit for that tribe’, she writes to Brewster. – With whom she promptly began work on her next opera, The Wreckers. Just how diametrically opposed the critics’ reaction was to that of the audience is evidenced by the fact that Der Wald produced the biggest box-office success of the entire season.
2016 New York – praise for Kaija Saariaho
It would take a hundred and thirteen years before the MET again ventured into an opera by a woman, L’Amour de loin by Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023), whom I also portrayed before. The reception of Saariaho’s opera in 2016 was considerably more favourable than the acrid bias Smyth had faced in 1903. For one thing women composers were no longer an absolute rarity, but perhaps more importantly, the opera had already made a 16-year-long triumphant tour of international stages.
The contrast between the two composers could hardly be greater. Whereas Smyth had a distinctly powerful style that draws you irrevocably into a musical argument brimming with full stops, commas and exclamation marks, Saariaho paints rather in pastel shades. She spins ever-changing, filigree fabrics of sound without fixed contours, immersing us in a benevolent ocean of sound, which blurs the sense of time and place.
Kaija Saariaho + Thea Derks at Dutch National Opera, February 2016They were also quite different in temperament: Smyth was outspoken and militant, did not let anything or anyone get her down, and had a great sense of humour; I laughed my ass off at her memoirs. Saariaho was her opposite. Although I love her music, too, and interviewed her several times, we never developed a personal connection. Saariaho was reserved and formulated with extreme caution, piercing me with her ever suspicious gaze. Her pointed eyebrows, raised high, made her facial expression seem even sterner than she probably intended. Nor have I ever caught her laughing out loud; at most, a faint smile sometimes appeared on her lips.
Towards a canon of women composers
Like Smyth, Saariaho composed six operas, but unlike her British predecessor, she was invariably successful; she is considered one of the most important composers of our time. Her last opera, Innocence, was again showered with praise after its premiere in Aix-en-Provence in 2021. ‘An opera for the ages,’ a Dutch newspaper summed it up succinctly.
So in terms of appreciation of women composers, things have changed a bit for the better in the last hundred years. The MET has commissioned new opera’s from Jane Tesori and Missy Mazzoli, and Saariaho’s Innocence is scheduled for its 2025-26 season.
The wait now is for a reappraisal of Ethel Smyth. The splendid recording of Der Wald by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and great soloists such as Morgan Pearse and Natalya Romaniw is surely a step in the right direction. It underlines once again that Smyth deserves a permanent place in the opera repertoire. I hope that in the foreseeable future we can rightly speak of a canon of Ladies at the MET.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd7sFsDXj9o&ab_channel=BBCSingers-Topic
* Amy Zigler: “What a splendid chance missed!”: Dame Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald at the Met. Opera Journal, December 2021.
#DerWald #EthelSmyth #HBBrewster #KaijaSaariaho #MeToo #TheWreckers
This article first appeared in the Nov-Dec issue of the Dutch music magazine De Nieuwe Muze.
I will play Der Wald in my radio show An Ox on the Roof on Concertzender NL on Sunday December between 5-6 pm Central European Time. The broadcast stays online for streaming. -
Today I used #bpftrace on a #Linux system to investigate a performance issue. Really took me back to my days working on #Solaris at Sun Microsystems. I used #dtrace quite a bit at that time, and it's good to see the same good ideas thriving in Linux.
I worked in #AIX development at #IBM for many years, and I was always a little sad that people didn't use #probevue more. Perhaps this is because AIX has a good system trace infrastructure and the culture grew up using that. Hard to say.
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"Diese alltägliche, weibliche, „kleine“ Perspektive ist meist in großen, staatlichen Archiven schwerer zu finden."
Im Blog des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Paris berichtet Quincy Mackay über Quellen zur Geschichte der Frauen im Algerienkrieg (1954-62) im Centre de documentation historique sur l’Algérie und in den Archives nationales d’outre mer in Aix-en-Provence 👇
https://dhip.hypotheses.org/2256
#Algerien #AlgerienKrieg #FranzösischeGeschichte #kolonialgeschichte
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"Diese alltägliche, weibliche, „kleine“ Perspektive ist meist in großen, staatlichen Archiven schwerer zu finden."
Im Blog des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Paris berichtet Quincy Mackay über Quellen zur Geschichte der Frauen im Algerienkrieg (1954-62) im Centre de documentation historique sur l’Algérie und in den Archives nationales d’outre mer in Aix-en-Provence 👇
https://dhip.hypotheses.org/2256
#Algerien #AlgerienKrieg #FranzösischeGeschichte #kolonialgeschichte
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"Diese alltägliche, weibliche, „kleine“ Perspektive ist meist in großen, staatlichen Archiven schwerer zu finden."
Im Blog des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Paris berichtet Quincy Mackay über Quellen zur Geschichte der Frauen im Algerienkrieg (1954-62) im Centre de documentation historique sur l’Algérie und in den Archives nationales d’outre mer in Aix-en-Provence 👇
https://dhip.hypotheses.org/2256
#Algerien #AlgerienKrieg #FranzösischeGeschichte #kolonialgeschichte
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"Diese alltägliche, weibliche, „kleine“ Perspektive ist meist in großen, staatlichen Archiven schwerer zu finden."
Im Blog des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Paris berichtet Quincy Mackay über Quellen zur Geschichte der Frauen im Algerienkrieg (1954-62) im Centre de documentation historique sur l’Algérie und in den Archives nationales d’outre mer in Aix-en-Provence 👇
https://dhip.hypotheses.org/2256
#Algerien #AlgerienKrieg #FranzösischeGeschichte #kolonialgeschichte
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"Diese alltägliche, weibliche, „kleine“ Perspektive ist meist in großen, staatlichen Archiven schwerer zu finden."
Im Blog des Deutschen Historischen Instituts Paris berichtet Quincy Mackay über Quellen zur Geschichte der Frauen im Algerienkrieg (1954-62) im Centre de documentation historique sur l’Algérie und in den Archives nationales d’outre mer in Aix-en-Provence 👇
https://dhip.hypotheses.org/2256
#Algerien #AlgerienKrieg #FranzösischeGeschichte #kolonialgeschichte
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George Benjamin on his opera Written on Skin: ‘We emphasize the unnatural’
George Benjamin (1960) is composer in focus of the coming Holland Festival. Apart from the Dutch premiere of his recent opera ‘Lessons in Love & Violence’ there’s a semi-staged performance of ‘Written on Skin’. Benjamin composed this highly successful opera in 2012 for the Festival of Aix-en-Provence, where it was premiered by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. This orchestra will now perform it in Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ Amsterdam with a new vocal cast.
George Benjamin with the score for his opera Written on Skin © Faber Music LtdIn 2012 I interviewed Benjamin on the occasion of the Dutch premiere for Muziekvan.nu, a new-music website that was discontinued in 2015. Here is a translation of my article, originally published on 27 September 2012.
In July 2012, the world premiere of George Benjamin’s opera Written on Skin was the highlight of the Festival in Aix-en-Provence. It is a medieval story about a cruel landowner who hires a young illustrator to record his heroic deeds. When the boy starts an affair with his wife Agnes, he kills him and forces her to eat his heart. Hereafter she commits suicide. Benjamin and librettist Martin Crimp present the characters as a kind of archaeologists, who summon up the old story and simultaneously bring it to life.
When I meet George Benjamin on Wednesday 26 September, he has just been rehearsing with the Nederlands Kamerorkest (Dutch Chamber Orchestra) for four hours. Excited, he says: ‘It was the first Sitzprobe, in which singers and musicians go through their parts together without acting. It was fantastic, the orchestra plays exceptionally well.’
The premiere in Aix-en-Provence was performed by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, but the singer are largely the same in the production of Dutch National Opera. Benjamin wrote his parts with these specific performers in mind.
George Benjamin & Thea Derks, Dutch National Opera 26 September 2012You started working with the singers in 2008. Why so early?
Benjamin: ‘I didn’t want to compose for an abstract, idealized type of voice, but for people of flesh and blood. At the request of Bernard Foccroule, director of the Festival in Aix, we chose a medieval saga from the Languedoc, the region to which the city belongs. In order to fit the characters in with my own composition methods, I went in search of singers even before I had put one note to paper.
Once I’d found them, I invited them to my home, where I made an inventory of their possibilities. Apart from things such as colour, strength, agility and vocal range, I also noted what they like or don’t like to sing. It was very special that all five of them accepted straightaway, because I didn’t disclose anything of the libretto. – While composing I like to keep the horizon close to myself.
The role of the illustrator is sung by the countertenor Bejun Mehta. Why he?
I imagined it would be great to compose a love scene in which a high female voice and a high male voice encircle each other. There is a splendid example in Monteverdi’s Poppea; I find this much more attractive than a combination of a soprano with the usual tenor or baritone. Moreover, Bejun has a beautiful timbre and is a great and intelligent artist. He’s ideal for this role: a seductive, dangerous artist who enters the kingdom and makes trouble is a perfect fit for a countertenor, precisely because it is unusual to hear a man sing so high.’
You wrote the leading role for the soprano Barbara Hannigan, who cannot sing it in Amsterdam. What does that mean for you?
At first I thought it was terribly unfortunate. Barbara is the ultimate star and her interpretation of Agnes in Aix was remarkable. She sings the fiercest passages in complete fearlessness, but can also be intensely lyrical and remain very precise all along. Her interpretation was mesmerizing and enchanting, but she’d been booked for the role of Lulu in Brussels years ago. I regret she cannot be here now, but I’d like to stress I am very happy with the Swedish soprano Elin Rombo. Although she impersonates Agnes very differently I didn’t need to change one note in my score.
Did you give the different characters their own kind of music, use leitmotifs perhaps?
Certainly no leitmotifs, for I hate those: it’s as if the characters continually present their business cards, as Debussy once joked. However, I do associate the characters with certain instruments. For example, I use bassoons and horns for the ruler. In the beginning, when he still radiates a certain nobility and warmth, I accompany his vocal lines with celli.
I try to evoke the splendid colours of the boy’s illustrations with unusual instruments, such as mandolins, glass harmonica and viola da gamba. At times also by combining stopped trumpets playing in a low register with low overtones from the harp. But it is never obvious, it works on an unconscious level. At least that’s what I hope, as a composer I don’t intend to give any clues as to what you should hear and feel at which moment.
Whence the title ‘Written on Skin’?
First of all, the boy draws on parchment, which is made from animal skin. Martin and I requested to view a thirteenth-century document in The British Library. It was moving to touch this: it felt fresh and a little chilly, as if it had been made yesterday. Yet it was eight hundred years old! Furthermore, thanks to the boy, the woman becomes more self-confident and starts rebelling against her husband’s authority. After he has forced her to eat the heart of her loved one, she triumphantly tells him he can never undo what the boy has written on her skin. A metaphor, of course, but with an erotic undertone.
The characters not only act their role, but also comment on it. Does this not create a distance?
I think it works the other way round. Opera is intrinsically unnatural, but a hundred years after Puccini we live in a film age. I find it absolutely unconvincing to see people singing on stage while behaving in a naturalistic way as in a Hollywood production. That is why we have consciously emphasized the artificiality. Three angels tell the story from a contemporary perspective and, in passing, bring it to life. In the first erotic scene Agnes and the boy look deeply into each other’s eyes – nothing has happened yet, but the meaning is clear.
I love how the singers at the same time say their lustful lyrics and comment on them – “says Agnes” – “says the boy”. I find the mixture of warm eroticism and cool artificiality much more interesting than conventional language. Precisely by acknowledging that what happens on stage is artificial, the audience can be absorbed by it all the more spontaneously.
Through his approach Martin lifts the story a few centimetres above the ground. And exactly in that space comes my music. Without this my music would be superfluous.’
Part of our interview can be heard on Soundcloud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ie8IJ_1cLg
#BarbaraHannigan #BejunMehta #DutchNationalOpera #GeorgeBenjamin #HollandFestival #LessonsInLoveViolence #MartinCrimb #WrittenOnSkin
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Hi all, I'm a french physicist from Marseille.
I work at the interface between statistical physics, network science and sociology (sometimes labelled #sociophysics or #ComputationalSocialScience). I'm basically interested in universal properties in human behaviour, and the mechanisms responsible for these properties.
I also teach maths, network science and Python in Aix-Marseille Univ.
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Today I used #bpftrace on a #Linux system to investigate a performance issue. Really took me back to my days working on #Solaris at Sun Microsystems. I used #dtrace quite a bit at that time, and it's good to see the same good ideas thriving in Linux.
I worked in #AIX development at #IBM for many years, and I was always a little sad that people didn't use #probevue more. Perhaps this is because AIX has a good system trace infrastructure and the culture grew up using that. Hard to say.
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Today I used #bpftrace on a #Linux system to investigate a performance issue. Really took me back to my days working on #Solaris at Sun Microsystems. I used #dtrace quite a bit at that time, and it's good to see the same good ideas thriving in Linux.
I worked in #AIX development at #IBM for many years, and I was always a little sad that people didn't use #probevue more. Perhaps this is because AIX has a good system trace infrastructure and the culture grew up using that. Hard to say.
-
Today I used #bpftrace on a #Linux system to investigate a performance issue. Really took me back to my days working on #Solaris at Sun Microsystems. I used #dtrace quite a bit at that time, and it's good to see the same good ideas thriving in Linux.
I worked in #AIX development at #IBM for many years, and I was always a little sad that people didn't use #probevue more. Perhaps this is because AIX has a good system trace infrastructure and the culture grew up using that. Hard to say.
-
Today I used #bpftrace on a #Linux system to investigate a performance issue. Really took me back to my days working on #Solaris at Sun Microsystems. I used #dtrace quite a bit at that time, and it's good to see the same good ideas thriving in Linux.
I worked in #AIX development at #IBM for many years, and I was always a little sad that people didn't use #probevue more. Perhaps this is because AIX has a good system trace infrastructure and the culture grew up using that. Hard to say.
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France: Wave of Attacks Against the Prison System
No less than nine attacks took place throughout France against prisons on the nights of Sunday 13 to Tuesday 15 April. This is unheard of since the great mutinies that took place in French prisons in the 1970s.
On the night of Sunday to Monday, seven vehicles were set on fire in the parking lot of the National School of Penitentiary Administration in Agen. This establishment trains future guards. The FO penitentiary union speaks of an “act of extreme gravity in the ENAP car park. One or more individuals arrived in a car, shouted before setting fire to seven vehicles, causing a fire.”
The following night, it was in Réau, in Seine-et-Marne, that the vehicle of a supervisor was set on fire and that three other cars were covered in flammable liquid. Then, seven other establishments were targeted. In front of the Nîmes prison, a car was burned. In front of the Toulon prison, heavy weapons fire targeted the door of the establishment, and fifteen impacts were noted. In Villepinte, in Seine-Saint-Denis, cars were also set on fire in front of the prison, as well as in front of Nanterre, in the Hauts-de-Seine.
In Aix-en-Provence, two vehicles caught fire and the gate of the Regional Intervention and Security Teams (ERIS), a particularly violent police unit specialising in prison interventions – was targeted. In Marseille, guards’ cars were tagged and another set on fire near the premises of the judicial protection of young people. The initials DDPF appeared on the bodywork, for “Rights of French prisoners”, a mysterious acronym. Finally, in Valence, two cars of guards also burned up in front of the prison.
These actions targeting prisons are coordinated, numerous and visibly organized. “Is this a provocation by drug bandits in the face of Gérald Darmanin’s prison policy? The act of members of the ultra-left? Nothing has been claimed at this stage,” wonders the newspaper Le Parisien. The investigators say they have “identified a Telegram channel” entitled “Rights of French prisoners” which is “suspected of being linked to ultra-left groups”. Info or fake news?
In any case, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office has taken hold of an investigation for “terrorist criminal association with a view to the preparation of one or more crimes of attack on the person and degradation or deterioration of the property of others in an organized gang and attempted murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. Highly invasive means of surveillance and investigation are therefore deployed.
The situation in French prisons is terrible. In February 2025, the number of prisoners broke a record, reaching the figure of 81,599. The threshold of 80,000 prisoners was crossed for the first time in November 2024, and it is only increasing. 21,631 people locked up are only defendants, i.e. people awaiting trial and considered innocent in the eyes of the courts.
There are currently 62,363 “operational places” in prisons. The calculation is quickly made: 130.8% occupancy rate. This rate even climbs to 200% in some establishments, where nearly 4,500 people find themselves sleeping on the floor. This prison overcrowding places France in third place among the worst pupils in Europe, just after Cyprus and Romania.
Every year, several dozen prisoners commit suicide behind bars – 149 in 2023. The suicide rate is 6 times higher among people locked up than outside. At the end of January 2025, the Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin announced the creation of a “super prison” for “super delinquents”, where the “100 biggest drug traffickers” would be kept. More and more means to monitor and punish rather than find solutions to the root of the problems.
Could the fires of the last few days be a backlash?
More figures on the prison here.
Source: https://contre-attaque.net/2025/04/15/attaques-en-serie-contre-le-monde-carceral/
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France: Wave of Attacks Against the Prison System
No less than nine attacks took place throughout France against prisons on the nights of Sunday 13 to Tuesday 15 April. This is unheard of since the great mutinies that took place in French prisons in the 1970s.
On the night of Sunday to Monday, seven vehicles were set on fire in the parking lot of the National School of Penitentiary Administration in Agen. This establishment trains future guards. The FO penitentiary union speaks of an “act of extreme gravity in the ENAP car park. One or more individuals arrived in a car, shouted before setting fire to seven vehicles, causing a fire.”
The following night, it was in Réau, in Seine-et-Marne, that the vehicle of a supervisor was set on fire and that three other cars were covered in flammable liquid. Then, seven other establishments were targeted. In front of the Nîmes prison, a car was burned. In front of the Toulon prison, heavy weapons fire targeted the door of the establishment, and fifteen impacts were noted. In Villepinte, in Seine-Saint-Denis, cars were also set on fire in front of the prison, as well as in front of Nanterre, in the Hauts-de-Seine.
In Aix-en-Provence, two vehicles caught fire and the gate of the Regional Intervention and Security Teams (ERIS), a particularly violent police unit specialising in prison interventions – was targeted. In Marseille, guards’ cars were tagged and another set on fire near the premises of the judicial protection of young people. The initials DDPF appeared on the bodywork, for “Rights of French prisoners”, a mysterious acronym. Finally, in Valence, two cars of guards also burned up in front of the prison.
These actions targeting prisons are coordinated, numerous and visibly organized. “Is this a provocation by drug bandits in the face of Gérald Darmanin’s prison policy? The act of members of the ultra-left? Nothing has been claimed at this stage,” wonders the newspaper Le Parisien. The investigators say they have “identified a Telegram channel” entitled “Rights of French prisoners” which is “suspected of being linked to ultra-left groups”. Info or fake news?
In any case, the National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office has taken hold of an investigation for “terrorist criminal association with a view to the preparation of one or more crimes of attack on the person and degradation or deterioration of the property of others in an organized gang and attempted murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise”. Highly invasive means of surveillance and investigation are therefore deployed.
The situation in French prisons is terrible. In February 2025, the number of prisoners broke a record, reaching the figure of 81,599. The threshold of 80,000 prisoners was crossed for the first time in November 2024, and it is only increasing. 21,631 people locked up are only defendants, i.e. people awaiting trial and considered innocent in the eyes of the courts.
There are currently 62,363 “operational places” in prisons. The calculation is quickly made: 130.8% occupancy rate. This rate even climbs to 200% in some establishments, where nearly 4,500 people find themselves sleeping on the floor. This prison overcrowding places France in third place among the worst pupils in Europe, just after Cyprus and Romania.
Every year, several dozen prisoners commit suicide behind bars – 149 in 2023. The suicide rate is 6 times higher among people locked up than outside. At the end of January 2025, the Minister of Justice Gérald Darmanin announced the creation of a “super prison” for “super delinquents”, where the “100 biggest drug traffickers” would be kept. More and more means to monitor and punish rather than find solutions to the root of the problems.
Could the fires of the last few days be a backlash?
More figures on the prison here.
Source: https://contre-attaque.net/2025/04/15/attaques-en-serie-contre-le-monde-carceral/
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Kaija Saariaho’s opera Innocence is an ardent plea against looking away
Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023), who died last summer, created a haunting masterpiece with Innocence, her fifth and last opera. It is an ardent plea against looking away, captivating for the full one hundred and forty-five minutes, providing much food for thought. The audience at the Amsterdam Opera rightly rewarded the Dutch premiere with stormy applause.
(c) Dutch National Opera / Marco BorggreveJust as we have looked away from Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians for decades and are surprised when their frustration erupts into an apocalyptic outbreak of violence, so too the bystanders of the school shooting in Innocence ignore the many signs that something was wrong with the young perpetrator.
The father confesses to having taught his son ‘to shoot like a man’ from childhood; the priest recounts how the boy enjoyed the death throes of a bird he had poisoned himself; the teacher recalls his fascination with serial killers, while his younger brother (the groom) watched him steal their father’s gun from the locked safe. None of them spoke out, so the massacre (referred to as ‘the tragedy’) could have been prevented.
As the survivors in Sofi Oksanen’s rock-solid libretto bitterly observe: we react collectively shocked at a bloody act and politicians publicly promise to take action, but their interest fades as soon as the headlines highlight other tragedies. In the end, nothing happens. Indeed, those who remain must learn to remain silent, learn not to remember: – ‘Until the next shooting.’
The story is set in 2000, during Tuomas and Stela’s wedding. Waitress Tereza replaces a sick colleague and, to her horror, recognises the family of her daughter Markéta’s killer. Tereza acts as the opera’s lynchpin. She confronts her customers about the misdeeds of their son and brother and reveals the family secret to the bride.
Chloe Lamford’s revolving, two-storey set artfully switches between the dining wedding guests and the classrooms where the shooting took place ten years earlier. The victims squirm across the floor, seeking bleeding cover in the toilets, in the corridors or under the tables.
Meanwhile, the survivors recount how their traumatic experience still defines their lives. One dares not sit with his back to a door, another makes distorted movements and yet another experiences ringing church bells as funerals: ‘There were too many of them.’
The title Innocence is well chosen, as innocence turns out to be an elastic concept. At first, the mother-in-law even claims that her son did not know what he was doing, while his friend Iris reveals that together they had spent a year carefully planning the massacre. She herself dropped out the night before.
As the opera proceeds, ever more chilling pieces of the puzzle fall into place. For instance, Tereza’s angelic daughter Markéta turns out to have bullied the murderer terribly, the schoolchildren spread naked images of him on the internet and the survivors only brought themselves to safety. Towards the end, Tuomas even confesses that he knew about his brother’s plans. He had wanted to take part in them, but was too cowardly to pull the trigger. Still he looks up to him: ‘I loved my brother, I love him still.’
Saariaho wrote shimmering music that keeps shifting colour. She builds an ominous atmosphere out of layers of elongated lines, from which short melodic motifs flare up. At moments of fear and dismay, she unleashes a turmoil of dissonant brass, boisterous percussion and jazzy rhythms, which unfortunately do not always come across flawlessly. Nor does Saariaho hesitate to (almost) completely silence the orchestra in more reflective passages. For instance, Tuomas sings a cappella of his love for his older brother.
Throughout the opera, the choir weaves a subtle, barely audible lament of wordless cantilenas, sometimes devolving into a desperate reiteration of the names of the victims. The Choir of Dutch National Opera shines in this role, sung from the wings. The soloists, too, are generally well cast and partly the same as at the world premiere in Aix-en-Provence in 2021.
Markéta (Vilma Jää) & Tereza (Jenny Carlstedt) (c) Marco BorggreveFinnish-Swedish Jenny Carlstedt dazzles as Tereza, making her pain palpable with her warm mezzo and strong acting. Finnish Vilma Jäa, in her schoolgirl dress, is the personification of the angel her mother sees in Markéta. However, the girl expresses her dark side in chillingly piercing vocals familiar from Slavic and Karelian folk music. Thomas Oliemans is also strong in his role of father-in-law, against which Markus Nykänen stands out somewhat pale as the groom.
Equally impressive are the mostly spoken roles of the survivors. Rowan Kievits gives a poignant portrayal of Student 4 with his distorted movements and truncated German phrases, while British alto Lucy Shelton impresses with her fragile Sprechgesang as the teacher who stops teaching out of guilt. Truly superior is French-Cameroonian Julie Hega in her role of Iris. With her walk in slow-motion, her penetrating gaze and snake-like hissing speech, she seems like evil incarnate; meanwhile, she holds up a merciless moral mirror to the others.
Despite the ink-black scenario, there is some hope in the epilogue. Student 4 thinks he can start a new life in another country; student 5 notes with surprise that for the first time he was not afraid to sit with his back to a door and Stela (a wonderful Lilian Farahani) decides to marry Tuomas after all, defying his conviction that she will always see his brother in him. Deeply moving is the final scene where Karméta begs her mother to stop buying her birthday presents and finally let her go.
With Innocence, director Simon Stone and Dutch National Opera have put on a top production that deserves to be heard and seen many more times.
This review first appeared in Dutch on the website Theaterkrant
Seen 10 October 2023, the opera runs through 22 October#JennyCarlstedt #JulieHegie #KaijaSaariaho #LucieShelton #SofiOksanen #ThomasOliemans
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#SNCF 🇫🇷 #CC6520 is seen here at Aix-les-Bains in the French Alps on a #TER service in August 2004. The train is composed of #USI, #UIC and #Corail stock. In the 1970s and 1980s Class #CC6500 locos used to work SNCF‘s most prestigious trains on DC lines. They finished their careers on regional duties.
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#SNCF 🇫🇷 #CC6520 is seen here at Aix-les-Bains in the French Alps on a #TER service in August 2004. The train is composed of #USI, #UIC and #Corail stock. In the 1970s and 1980s Class #CC6500 locos used to work SNCF‘s most prestigious trains on DC lines. They finished their careers on regional duties.
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#SNCF 🇫🇷 #CC6520 is seen here at Aix-les-Bains in the French Alps on a #TER service in August 2004. The train is composed of #USI, #UIC and #Corail stock. In the 1970s and 1980s Class #CC6500 locos used to work SNCF‘s most prestigious trains on DC lines. They finished their careers on regional duties.
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#SNCF 🇫🇷 #CC6520 is seen here at Aix-les-Bains in the French Alps on a #TER service in August 2004. The train is composed of #USI, #UIC and #Corail stock. In the 1970s and 1980s Class #CC6500 locos used to work SNCF‘s most prestigious trains on DC lines. They finished their careers on regional duties.
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#SNCF 🇫🇷 #CC6520 is seen here at Aix-les-Bains in the French Alps on a #TER service in August 2004. The train is composed of #USI, #UIC and #Corail stock. In the 1970s and 1980s Class #CC6500 locos used to work SNCF‘s most prestigious trains on DC lines. They finished their careers on regional duties.
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Taix French Restaurant in Echo Park Closing for Hiatus | Echo Park News https://www.diningandcooking.com/2563343/taix-french-restaurant-in-echo-park-closing-for-hiatus-echo-park-news/ #EchoPark #francais #france #French #FrenchFood #FrenchMeals #meals #RestaurantClosure #TaixRestaurant
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Taix French Restaurant in Echo Park Closing for Hiatus | Echo Park News
Longtime Taix employee Joel Peña stands behind the bar as Echo Park regulars gather for final meals before the restaurant’s extended closure. Eastsider Staff photo by Ba…
#dining #cooking #diet #food #Frenchmeals #echopark #francais #france #French #frenchfood #frenchmeals #meals #restaurantclosure #TaixRestaurant
https://www.diningandcooking.com/2563343/taix-french-restaurant-in-echo-park-closing-for-hiatus-echo-park-news/ -
A Comprehensive Review of JFS (Journaled File System)
The Journaled File System (JFS), developed by IBM, is a filesystem that has carved a niche for itself in the realm of data storage solutions. Originating as part of IBM's AIX operating system in the early 1990s, JFS was later adapted for Linux, where it was released under an open-source license.
Read More: https://machaddr.substack.com/p/a-comprehensive-review-of-jfs-journaled
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@thomholwerda Although it's almost certainly not going to be a product you have any use of, I remember (unpleasantly) having to do manual developer testing of #IBM #CICS Transaction Gateway on Solaris, HP-UX, AIX (and more) in 2004.
So, at least one small part of IBM still cared :-)
