We trooped off to the Champs-Elysées theatre, a pretty theatre up on the sixth floor. Cocteau’s show has the very latest thing in music…
Photography print available at Found View Gallery.
We trooped off to the Champs-Elysées theatre, a pretty theatre up on the sixth floor. Cocteau’s show has the very latest thing in music: overture by Poulenc. We expected something eccentric but it was charming, a flight of elegance. […] It was madly crowded. Friends came up to congratulate me on my appearance. I was the smartest: sable coat and shift-dress of glittering silver material with a large black pattern: a simple style with a touch of the medieval, clear-cut lines. It suits me better than elaboration and it’s never out of fashion. Saw Henri Bernstein and his wife whom I couldn’t find pretty however hard I tried: little shopgirl’s face, badly proportioned features, not ugly, not handsome, insignificant. Women nowadays are so commonplace! […]
The next part of the show was three pieces by Eric Satie, encored and much applauded. The composer had to come down into the auditorium. I had met him before. He pressed our outstretched hands warmly, thanked us for our compliments and withdrew, happy at his success. […] To sum up, the musical side of the show was brilliant, full of charm and talent; but Jean Cocteau’s side of it, to be honest, was deplorable. Parts of his books are admirable. There he has a dazzling gift, a new and bizarre kind of talent. He touches the sublime and overleaps good sense. He should stick to that.
Liane de Pougy
Notes:
• From My Blue Notebooks
• Liane de Pougy was a famed courtesan in Paris who then married a Romanian prince and eventually became a nun.
Photography print available at Found View Gallery.
Ever Paris 