The opera house in Nancy is on an elegant public square called Place Stanislas, which was designed and built in the 1750s on orders of the Duke of Lorraine, Stanislas Leszczynski. The buildings on the four sides of Place Stanislas all have similar neo-classical façades, and two of the corners Read More …
When I go to art museums I am always glad to see paintings on themes that I ‘know’ because they have also been made into operas. In Nancy I was especially glad to come across a large canvas entitled “The Destruction of the Palace of Armide”, which vividly illustrates a Read More …
In 2017 I went back to Nancy and saw David Hermann’s staging of the opera Ariadne auf Naxos by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). This is an opera I have seen many times before, for instance in Koblenz (as mentioned in my post Operas in Koblenz) and in two different productions in Read More …
Instead of being shipwrecked, captured by pirates and sold into slavery, the Italian travelers in David Hermann’s staging of Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri were flying comfortably in an Airbus when it crash-landed in the jungle in some remote part of the world. The wrecked plane was apparently found by some sort Read More …
The neo-classical Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) occupies the entire south side of Place Stanislas in Nancy. In the exact mid-point of the square is the statue of Stanislas himself, facing north. The statue, dated 1831, is dedicated to “Stanislas, the benefactor” from “the thankful Lorraine”. On the other side Read More …
Neptune, the Roman god of the sea (Poseidon to the ancient Greeks), is featured in an elaborate set of fountains at the northwest corner of Place Stanislas, next to the Fine Arts Museum in Nancy. Details of these fountains were featured in the videos used in the opera production of Lully’s Read More …
The Basilica Saint-Epvre is the large church next to the vélOstan’lib bicycle station # 7 in Nancy. I took this photo from my table at a sidewalk café across the street. Since I had never heard of Saint-Epvre before, I later looked him up and found that he was the Read More …
The second building of the Lorraine Museum (Musée Lorrain) is the former convent of the Cordeliers, a religious order of monks who wore a knotted rope or cord around their waists in earlier times. Whereas the displays in the Ducal Palace illustrate regional history as seen by the ruling classes, Read More …
The Lorraine Museum (Musée Lorrain) is a regional museum located in two buildings just a short walk north of Place Stanislas in Nancy. The first of these buildings is the former palace of the Dukes of Lorraine, which now houses a large collection of paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, scientific instruments Read More …
Nancy has a small self-service on-street bicycle rental system called vélOstan’lib, with 29 stations, 250 bicycles and 560 docking points. These numbers have not changed since 2015, so either they haven’t expanded the system since then or (more likely) they have neglected to update the numbers on their website. The Read More …