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Fr o m £3.8m
Renée Fleming
made my debut at the new Bastille opera house in 1991, during the Gulf War. We were performing Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. My role was Countess Almaviva. Suddenly, protestors broke into the theatre, chanting, “France out of the Gulf.” They literally took over the stage. I was in my dressing room, watching it all on closed-circuit TV. It was surreal. The director tried to talk the demonstrators down, while the singers continued and the orchestra played. Someone was holding a bag of blood, another sat in Cherubino’s chair, but the show must go on, and it did. Eventually, riot police arrived in full gear and dispersed the protestors with tear gas. It was just before I had to sing Porgi, amor, which is one of the hardest arias in the opera. There were traces of tear gas in the air while I sang, and my tears were real. I started to spend a couple of months working in Paris each summer when my daughters, Amelia and Sage, were tiny. I enrolled them into the Ecole Internationale Bilingue, a secular private international school with campuses in the centre of Paris. One of our favourite places to go after class was the sandbox in the shadow of Notre Dame. If they were tired of the sand, we’d go to the nearby playground, which had swings and a seesaw, or the beautiful rose garden at the back of the cathedral. For us, it felt like a secret neighbourhood treasure. After renting in various places, I bought an apartment on Rue Nicolas Flamel, near the Hôtel de Ville. The building dates from 1890 and contained five flats. Mine had to have everything ripped out. Eventually, with the help of a designer, I made it into a beautiful home. It was fun to buy everything from scratch — looking for furniture and
fabrics, and deciding on colour schemes. Rue Nicolas Flamel is named after the 14th-century French scribe who some say discovered the philosopher’s stone. A shop on my street, Arum Art Floral, made exquisite yet simple plant and flower arrangements. One of the first things I’d do when I arrived in Paris would be to go there and buy flowers. The three of us would walk everywhere, discovering galleries, museums, parks and cafes. We’d spend hours in the Musée d’Orsay, which was our favourite. The markets in the Rue Rambuteau area and Le BHV Marais department store were regular haunts, too. One of my eccentricities is that I love cookbooks, but I don’t ever cook. Even in Paris — with wonderful food for sale virtually on my doorstep — I didn’t spend time in the kitchen. I travelled with a nanny, and she took care of the meals for the girls while I was working. Both of them are now much more interested in cooking than I am. I do my best to be careful about what I eat, and don’t touch carbs or sugar. In Paris, that’s always been difficult. One of my favourite restaurants is Brasserie Julien, on Rue du Faubourg St Denis, which serves divine profiteroles. Even now the girls are grown up, it’s hard to walk across the bridge to the Ile Saint-Louis without stopping for one of Berthillon’s delicious ice creams. In the evenings, if I had a night off, I’d go to the jazz clubs around Les Halles or eat Vietnamese food at Tan Dinh, on Rue de Verneuil. I kept my apartment for 10 years. It enabled me to enjoy Paris in a much more rooted way than if I were just renting someone else’s space. Over the years, I compiled enough information that I could probably publish a small guide to the city. I’d have a special section for clothes shopping. Damir Doma, on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, is at the top. Interview by Sue Fox
Renée Fleming in
Over the moon If you want to splash out, you could stay at William and Kate’s Seychelles retreat
MOVING ON ALEXANDRA GOSS
27.03.2016 / 3
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vladi-private-islands.de
The American soprano Renée Fleming, 57, recalls the Paris flat where she lived in the 1990s — and a particularly dramatic performance of The Marriage of Figaro
BBy royal appointment It no secret that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge enjoy a It’s h holiday. But those who don’t want to copy their recent jaunt to the Alpine oligarchs’ ghetto of Courchevel (perhaps you don’t like Russians, or snow, or how you look in salopettes) could li al always stay in their honeymoon pad in the Seychelles. Wills, 33, and Kate, 34, spent 10 nights after the 2011 royal w wedding in villa No 11, on North Island. Their romantic suite — fo for couples only — offers 8,000 sq ft of eco-conscious luxury, crafted by hand from wood, stone and glass, cascading down cr ov over multiple levels along granite boulders to a private beach. A All this — along with food, drinks, scuba diving, sea kayaking an and laundry — costs €4,800 (£3,800) per person per night. T The resort, which has also hosted George and Amal Clooney, an and the Beckhams, offers big-game fishing for an additional € €3,500 a day. I bet that was right up Wills’s street. 00 49 4033 8989, vladi-private-islands.de 0
SNAP IT UP Known for his edgy photos and splenetic wit, David Bailey has added cachet to a contemporary development of 44 homes in London W1. The Chilterns, at No 24 Paddington Street, has a sleek white lobby/gallery space displaying 19 of his large-scale studies of the area — and each resident gets an original framed Bailey print. The final phase of flats is for sale, with prices starting at £3.8m for a two-bedder, rising to £7.7m for three bedroms. Rub shoulders with the slebs at the nearby Chiltern Firehouse. 020 8418 1070, thechilternsw1.com
HOUSES OF THE WEEK
Recital, part of the Renée Fleming Artist Spotlight, is at the Barbican, London EC2, on April 6 (0845 120 7550, barbican. org.uk)
Holmes truths £825,000
£1.6m
We want some more The Olivers are doing up their new Highgate home in time for baby number five
Riot police arrived to disperse protestors just before I had to sing one of the hardest arias. There were traces of tear gas in the air and my tears were real
CONTENTS BREAK FOR THE BORDERS
DEVON ON EARTH
The work of the architect William Elliot, who has a cult following in the Scottish Borders, Glenburn Hall is a 68-acre mini estate above Jedburgh. It’s being sold by a former Fleet Street editor and his interior-designer wife — only the fourth time the A-listed Georgian mansion has been on the market. It has a tidy six bedrooms, and decor that is more elegant country B&B than tartantastic; there’s also a lodge house with a stable block. 0131 222 9600, glenburnhall.com
Living in this former station officer’s house must feel like being in a Famous Five adventure. In East Prawle, near the most southerly point in Devon, the five-bedroom house has unobstructed coastal views and 2,100 sq ft of stylish interiors. It’s eight miles from Kingsbridge, with remote beaches and coves to explore, and you’re not far from a good pub and a seasonal cafe and shop — ginger beer, anyone? 01548 857588, marchandpetit.co.uk
Family planning The planners can be glacially slow when it comes to making decisions, but luckily for Jamie and Jools Oliver, Camden council has acted in the nick of time. The couple have just been granted consent to revamp their grade II* listed pad in Highgate, north London. Let’s hope they can get the works — which include replacing windows, moving round doorways and adding a bathroom — done in time for the arrival of their fifth child in August. Last autumn, the chef, 40, and his wife, 41, reportedly paid a shade less than £10m for the eight-bedroom, 5,699 sq ft semi, which has four floors, a basement kitchen and a vast west-facing garden. They bought without selling their old home in Primrose Hill, which is now on the market for £11.95m. Well, when you’re worth an estimated £180m...
Amateur sleuths with £1.55m to spare may wish to investigate Church Hatch, a grade II listed Georgian pile in Dorset. The story goes that staying at the seven-bedroom house in Christchurch inspired Arthur Conan Doyle to write the 1892 mystery The Adventure of the Speckled Band, in which Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson foil the plans of the villain to murder his stepdaughter by having her bitten by a venomous snake (the “speckled band”). In the town centre, between the priory and the castle ruins, the 4,075 sq ft residence comes with a two-bedroom mews house, but, hopefully, no poisonous reptiles. 01202 484748, denisons.com