THE JONES DANCE AND SING IN THE MOULIN ROUGE

The Jones are enjoying the Moulin Rouge

Today, The Jones are visiting the most famous cabaret in Paris. Moulin Rouge, the original house, which burned down in 1915, was co-founded in 1889 by Charles Zidler and Josep Oller, who also owned the Paris Olympia. 

Close to Montmartre in the Paris district of Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy in the 18th arrondissement, it is marked by the red windmill on its roof. The closest métro station is Blanche.

Moulin Rouge is best known as the spiritual birthplace of the modern form of the can-can dance. Originally introduced as a seductive dance by the courtesans who operated from the site, the can-can dance revue evolved into a form of entertainment of its own and led to the introduction of cabarets across Europe.

More information: Moulin Rouge

Today, the Moulin Rouge is a tourist attraction, offering musical dance entertainment for visitors from around the world. The club's decor still contains much of the romance of fin de siècle France.

The Belle Époque was a period of peace and optimism marked by industrial progress, and a particularly rich cultural exuberance was about at the opening of the Moulin Rouge. The Expositions Universelles of 1889 and 1900 are symbols of this period. 

Grandma's memories at Moulin Rouge

The Eiffel Tower was also constructed in 1889, epitomising the spirit of progress along with the culturally transgressive cabaret. Japonism, an artistic movement inspired by the Orient, with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as its most brilliant disciple, was also at its height.

Montmartre, which, at the heart of an increasingly vast and impersonal Paris, retained a bucolic village atmosphere; festivities and artists mixed, with pleasure and beauty as their values. 

On 6 October 1889, the Moulin Rouge opened in the Jardin de Paris, at the foot of the Montmartre hill. Its creator Josep Oller and his Manager Charles Zidler were formidable businessmen who understood the public's tastes. 

More information: The Guardian

The aim was to allow the very rich to come and 'slum it' in a fashionable district, Montmartre. The extravagant setting -the garden was adorned with a gigantic elephant- allowed people from all walks of life to mix.

Workers, residents of the Place Blanche, artists, the middle classes, businessmen, elegant women, and foreigners passing through Paris rubbed shoulders. Nicknamed The First Palace of Women by Oller and Zidler, the cabaret quickly became a great success.

The Jones are ready to watch the show

Some reasons of its success were a revolutionary architecture for the auditorium that allowed rapid changes of décor and where everyone could mix; some festive champagne evenings where people danced and were entertained thanks to amusing acts that changed regularly, such as the Pétomane; a new dance inspired by the quadrille which becomes more and more popular: The Can-can, danced to a furious rhythm by dancers in titillating costumes; famous dancers whom history still remembers: la Goulue, Jane Avril, la Môme Fromage, Grille d'Egout, Nini Pattes en l'Air, Yvette Guilbert, Valentin le désossé, and the clown Cha-U-Kao, and a place loved by artists, including Toulouse-Lautrec whose posters and paintings secured rapid and international fame for the Moulin Rouge.

29 July 1907 is the first appearance of Mistinguett on stage at the Moulin Rouge in the Revue de la Femme. Her talent was immediately obvious. The following year she had a huge success with Max Dearly in la Valse chaloupée.

More information: Bonjour Paris

Les escaliers de la butte sont durs aux miséreux,
les ailes des moulins protègent les amoureux.

The stairs of the hillock are hard to the poor,
the wings of mills protect lovers.

Rufus Wainright

Mistinguett

Mistinguett (1875-1956) was a French actress and singer, whose birth name was Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois. She was at one time the highest-paid female entertainer in the world.

The daughter of Antoine Bourgeois and Jeannette Debrée, Jeanne Bourgeois was born at 5 Rue du Chemin-de-Fer, in Enghien-les-Bains, Val-d'Oise, Île-de-France. The family moved to Soisy-sous-Montmorency where she spent her childhood; her parents later worked as mattress-makers.

At an early age Bourgeois aspired to be an entertainer. She began as a flower seller in a restaurant in her hometown, singing popular ballads as she sold blossoms. After taking classes in theatre and singing, she began her career as an entertainer in 1885. One day on the train to Paris for a violin lesson, she met Saint-Marcel, who directed the revue at the Casino de Paris. 

More information: The Vintage News

Bourgeois made her debut as Mistinguett at the Casino de Paris in 1895 and went on to appear in venues such as the Folies Bergère, Moulin Rouge and Eldorado. 

Mistinguett Art Nouveau posters

Her risqué routines captivated Paris, and she went on to become the most popular French entertainer of her time and the highest-paid female entertainer in the world, known for her flamboyance and a zest for the theatrical. In 1919 her legs were insured for 500,000 francs.

Though Mistinguett never married, she had a son, Léopoldo João de Lima e Silva. She also had a long relationship with Maurice Chevalier, 13 years her junior. It is claimed that she and Chevalier informed the police in 1940 that singer/songwriter Charles Trenet was gay and consorting with youths.

She first recorded her signature song, Mon Homme, in 1916. It was popularised under its English title My Man by Fanny Brice and has become a standard in the repertoire of numerous pop and jazz singers.

More information: Paris City Vision

During a tour of the United States, Mistinguett was asked by Time magazine to explain her popularity. Her answer was, It is a kind of magnetism. I say 'Come closer' and draw them to me.

If I could live in a cabaret, I would. 

If I could live in 'Moulin Rouge,' I would. 

Rita Ora

THE JONES MEET SAINT JEANNE D'ARC IN SACRÉ-COEUR

The Jones are arriving to the Sacré-Coeur

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris or Sacré-Cœur, is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Paris. A popular landmark, the basilica is located at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in the city. 

Sacré-Cœur is a double monument, political and cultural, both a national penance for the defeat of France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and the socialist Paris Commune of 1871 crowning its most rebellious neighborhood, and an embodiment of conservative moral order, publicly dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was an increasingly popular vision of a loving and sympathetic Christ. The basilica was designed by Paul Abadie. Construction began in 1875 and was completed in 1914. The basilica was consecrated after the end of World War I in 1919.

More information: Sacre-Coeur Montmartre

The inspiration for Sacré Cœur's design originated on 4 September 1870, the day of the proclamation of the Third Republic, with a speech by Bishop Fournier attributing the defeat of French troops during the Franco-Prussian War to a divine punishment after a century of moral decline since the French Revolution, in the wake of the division in French society that arose in the decades following that revolution, between devout Catholics and legitimist royalists on one side, and democrats, secularists, socialists, and radicals on the other.

Víctor Jones and Jeanne d'Arc statue

This schism in the French social order became particularly pronounced after the 1870 withdrawal of the French military garrison protecting the Vatican in Rome to the front of the Franco-Prussian War by Napoleon III, the secular uprising of the Paris Commune of 1870-1871, and the subsequent 1871 defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War.

The overall style of the structure shows a free interpretation of Romano-Byzantine features, an unusual architectural vocabulary at the time, which was a conscious reaction against the neo-Baroque excesses of the Palais Garnier cited in the competition. 

Many design elements of the basilica symbolise nationalist themes: the portico, with its three arches, is adorned by two equestrian statues of French national saints Joan of Arc (1927) and King Saint Louis IX, both executed in bronze by Hippolyte Lefebvre; and the nineteen-ton Savoyarde bell, one of the world's heaviest, cast in 1895 in Annecy, alludes to the annexation of Savoy in 1860.

More information: French Moments

Jeanne d'Arc

Joan of Arc, in French Jeanne d'Arc, (1412-1431), nicknamed The Maid of Orléans, La Pucelle d'Orléans, is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War and was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. 

Joan of Arc was born to Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée, a peasant family, at Domrémy in north-east France. Joan said she received visions of the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. 

The uncrowned King Charles VII sent Joan to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence after the siege was lifted only nine days later. Several additional swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims. This long-awaited event boosted French morale and paved the way for the final French victory.

More information: History

On 23 May 1430, she was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction, which was allied with the English. She was later handed over to the English and put on trial by the pro-English Bishop of Beauvais Pierre Cauchon on a variety of charges. After Cauchon declared her guilty she was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431, dying at about nineteen years of age.

Jeanne d'Arc

In 1456, an inquisitorial court authorized by Pope Callixtus III examined the trial, debunked the charges against her, pronounced her innocent, and declared her a martyr. 

In the 16th century she became a symbol of the Catholic League, and in 1803 she was declared a national symbol of France by the decision of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Joan of Arc is one of the nine secondary patron saints of France, along with Saint Denis, Saint Martin of Tours, Saint Louis, Saint Michael, Saint Rémi, Saint Petronilla, Saint Radegund and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.

Joan of Arc has remained a popular figure in literature, painting, sculpture, and other cultural works since the time of her death, and many famous writers, filmmakers and composers have created works about her.

Download Saint Joan d'Arc by Mark Twain

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. 

But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, 

that is a fate more terrible than dying. 

Jeanne d'Arc / Joan of Arc