Quote:
Originally Posted by Monro
In (Summer) 3 years from now I'm going to make the southern route: Nice, Saint-Tropez, Ajaccio, Rome, and then on through Greece, including Santorini. Just added Corsica to my list to see from where such a beautiful lady came from. Hey, maybe I'll bump into her on the beach. Nahhh.. she'll be in Paris.
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You might not have to wish for a lucky break. Last year, Alizée and fellow
MM dance-theater school alum Patrick Fiori hosted the annual Saint Erasmus festival in Ajaccio at the start of June. Read the details in my old post
here. These days, there are only about four dozen fishermen left in Ajaccio. (Did you know Alizée's grandma was among the first women to enter this trade?) But
Saint Erasmus, patron saint of fishermen, has traditionally cast a big cultural shadow over all of maritime Corsica. There are multiple churches on the island named for him, including one in Ajaccio itself. I suppose the biggest is the
cathedral (i.e. bishop's seat) in Cervione, which overlooks Corsica's extensive oriental plain. (I am coming close to completing a historical essay on this part of Corsica - stay tuned.) There is also at least one
hotel named after him - and who knows how much other stuff! A limited sense of the pageantry of the festival can be sampled
here, which recalls events last year in Ile Rousse, in the north of Corsica.
<center><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0u-V9dKpj1w" frameborder="0"></iframe><br>Traditional Georgian polyphony at Eglise St Erasme, Ajaccio</center>
BTW, Erasmus is one of the 14 so-called
Holy Helpers, which also includes St. Denis, patron saint of all France, executed a short walk away from
Institubes, as I have previously explained
here. But the
Holy Helper you probably know best is St. George. The venerable Gibbon, rightly celebrated as the first modern objective historian,
writes memorably about him, including these words:<blockquote><i>He accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud and corruption; but his malversations were so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the pursuits of justice... Soon the prevailing faction promoted George of Cappadocia to the throne of Athanasius. The entrance of the new archbishop was that of a Barbarian conqueror; and each moment of his reign was polluted by cruelty and avarice... he oppressed with an impartial hand the various inhabitants of his extensive diocese... The odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the mask of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter.</i></blockquote>A defense of sorts is offered by the (
1913 edition of) the Catholic Encyclopedia, which
pleads a case of mistaken identity.
Another churchman who made himself quite rich was Ajaccio-born Cardinal Fesch, who gave his name to the college which Alizée briefly attended and bequeathed to his native city a splendid art museum, featuring the best collection of Italian painting in France after the Louvre itself.
Of the three posters I've seen for the big annual Gala of the
Mufraggi school at which Alizée studied for a decade, two of them placed the event at the end of June, while the one for last year named mid-June. MM has just
announced the date of this year's Gala as 28 June 2011.
It might be cool if the Festival and the Gala were close enough together in the future that one might take them both in during a single stay in Corsica.