VC is back home after a long weekend in Toronto, having digested 2 Baroque opera performances, not to mention visiting Canada’s largest museum.  This post is just a quick update about what’s coming up on the blog later this week.

Here are the receipts for the 2 operas:

The Elgin Theatre in Toronto, home of Opera Atelier and venue for Dido & Aeneas.

The Four Seasons Centre in Toronto, home of the Canadian Opera Company and venue for Ariodante.

As promised in the previous post, I will review both performances on the blog.

I also managed a flying visit to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), of which I’m now an out-of-town member.

The protuberant glass structure in the middle distance is the main entrance of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM ) in Toronto.

The ROM has a significant collection of furniture and other objects from New France, which fits nicely into VC’s period frame.  I will dedicate the last post of the week to the museum’s collection of rustic Rococo furniture from old Québec.

Please check back in a day or two for the review of Dido & Aeneas.  I loved it, but I do have one quibble.  Stay tuned for details!

It’s sad but true, dear friends.  Versailles Century’s tour of the 18C rooms at the Carnavalet Museum comes to an end today.  Our final destination is a walnut-paneled salon that contains my favourite piece in the entire museum: a divine daybed upholstered in yellow.

I would like to show you more pictures of this handsome salon, really I would.  Unfortunately, the light was so dim and you’re not supposed to use flash.  Just a few of my photos turned out decently.  Here’s one.

A wood-paneled salon in the Carnavalet Museum.

We pursue our continuing series of visits to the Carnavalet Museum this week.  Today’s destination: a drawing room formerly in the hôtel particulier of the Dukes of Uzès.*  Its most noteworthy feature is a set of splendid boiseries, or carved panels.

View of a drawing room salvaged from the hôtel d’Uzès.

The boiseries of this drawing room were designed and executed in 1767 under the supervision of the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, who was also responsible for the decoration of the Café Militaire, as explained in a previous post.

I didn’t mean to buy the November issue of Architectural Digest, I really didn’t, but I just couldn’t resist the travel feature.  It’s a 3-page spread about the Palazzina Cinese, a gem of a chinoiserie villa in Palermo.

The first page of the AD spread on the Palazzina Cinese.

By strict chronological reckoning, the chinoiserie decor of the Palazzina Cinese falls outside the 1682-1789 timeframe of the Versailles Century because it dates from after 1800.  The spirit of chinoiserie, however, is decidedly 18th century, so I rule it within bounds.  Basta!

The villa was purchased as a holiday home by King Ferdinand of Naples and Sicily* after he arrived in Palermo in 1799.  He’d been driven out of Naples by a republican uprising.  Fortunately, his other kingdom, Sicily, remained loyal.  He and his wife Maria Carolina, sister of Marie-Antoinette, settled down to life in Sicily, which included decorating their new folly.  They promptly settled on a decorative scheme in the ‘Chinese’ taste.

Actually, the rooms feature not just chinoiserie, but also turcquerie, which you can make out in the picture at top left on the second page of the article (see below).

The second page of the AD spread on the Palazzina Cinese.

You can read the full article with its high-quality photos on the AD website.  Check it out here: http://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/palermo-italy-casina-cinese.

*The 2 kingdoms were merged in 1816, after which the unified state was called the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

We’re not nearly done with our commemorative series of visits to mark the temporary closure of the Carnavalet Museum.  Today we go to the Café Militaire.

As I’ve remarked before, one of the wonderful things about this museum is that it preserves interiors from vanished buildings, such as the staircase of the vanished Hôtel de Luynes, which we inspected in a recent post.  Another one of these preserved interiors is that of the Café Militaire.

The decoration of this establishment was  commissioned from the young architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux by the distiller Godeau.   The venue was a house built in 1761-62 by another architect on the site of what is now the Louvre des Antiquaires.  The house, which no longer exists, was in the ‘Greek’ style, so Godeau wanted a suitably ‘Greek’ decorative scheme.

According to the onsite info placard — from which I got all of this information, by the way — the architect opted for a martial scheme of 12 columns in the form of fascicles (vertical bundles) of lances topped by capitals in the guise of warriors’ helmets.

The paneling of the vanished Café Militaire preserved in the Carnavalet Museum.  Note the columns with the helmet capitals.

In our continuing series ‘in honour of’ the temporary closure of the Carnavalet Museum, we examine 4 chinoiserie panels from the former residence of the Duke of Richelieu in Paris.

Why 4?  They are meant to symbolize the 4 elements: Air, Earth, Fire and Water.

The first 2 of 4 chinoiserie panels: Air and Earth.

In the wake of the recent closing of the Carnavalet Museum for renovations, we’re touring some of its Versailles Century-related exhibits. Today we inspect what I’ve dubbed the ‘Green Salon.’

The ‘Green Salon’ in the Carnavalet Museum.

You see that info placard in the centre?  I usually photograph such things as a memory aid, but for some reason I forgot to snap it.  The official name of this room, not to mention its provenance, was on that placard. All memory of it is gone, and the museum’s website says nothing about it. Hence I’ve dubbed it simply the ‘Green Salon,’ after the mint-green trim on the boiseries.  It’s obviously from some Louis XV-era aristocratic residence in Paris, but if you know which one, please comment below.

In the wake of this week’s closing of the Carnavalet Museum for a 3-year program of renovations, I’ve decided to devote this and the next several posts to highlights of the museum’s collections.  Today we inspect the Escalier de Luynes, or the Luynes staircase, which was once in the now-disappeared Hôtel de Luynes, townhouse of the dukes of Luynes.*

Marble steps of the Escalier de Luynes in the Carnavalet Museum.

One of the things that makes the Carnavalet Museum so special is that it showcases complete rooms and architectural elements from buildings that no longer exist, or whose interiors have been completely altered.  In other words, the minds behind the museum were farsighted early preservationists who already in the late 19th century were salvaging priceless treasures of Paris’s built heritage that would otherwise have been lost forever.

It’s a sad day for museum lovers and Versailles Century enthusiasts.  As of today, 3 October, 2016, the Carnavalet Museum in Paris is closed for a massive 3-year program of renovations.  If all goes well, it should re-open in the autumn of 2019.

A facade in the main courtyard of the Carnavalet Museum.

In this edition of VC Museum Visits, we tour the Museum-School of Portuguese Decorative Arts in Lisbon.

Located in the shadow of an ancient Moorish wall in the hillside district of Alfama, this exquisite museum is run by the Ricardo Espirito de Santo Silva Foundation.*  It’s housed in the former palace of the Viscounts of Azurara, which the late Senhor Espirito do Santo Silva (1900-1955), a banker and lavish patron of the arts, purchased in 1947 specifically for the purpose of creating a museum.  A lifelong admirer of Alfama, Lisbon’s most historic district, he was also keen to preserve the skills and traditions of the artisans who lived in the area, hence the inclusion of a school in the foundation.

I knew I was going to love it as soon as I saw what was in the vestibule.

A Cinderella-like 18C carriage in the vestibule.