& LORE
OF THE
MOULIN ROUGE,
FROM BELLE EPOQUE PARIS TO BROADWAY
I
In 1889 two remarkable institutions that became synonymous with The City of Light opened. One was the Eiffel Tower, a sky-scraping thousand-foot tall, wrought-iron structure erected for the Paris World’s Fair. It remains one of the most visited tourist attractions in the world. The other? A scarlet-colored night spot with a distinctive windmill perched on its roof. Set in the Jardin du Paris, at the foot of the bohemian Montmartre district (where there were once many farms with windmills), the legendary Moulin Rouge (Red Mill) was created as a unique pleasure palace. There the champagne flowed, the ornate décor beguiled, aristocrats and bohemian writers and artists mingled, and staged shows were opulent, risqué and, at times, scandalous. A temple of decadence and dazzle, portrayed in the famed artworks of Toulouse-Lautrec, silent films and talkies, and most recently in a smash hit Broadway musical, the Moulin Rouge has persisted despite fires, wars, boom, bust, and two global pandemics.
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Conor Ryan as Christian and Courtney Reed as Satine in the North American Tour of Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Musical, Photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade.
THE LIFE
BY MISHA BERSON
Broadway’s Moulin Rouge! The Musical, the recipient of ten 2021 Tony Awards (including Best Musical) is currently spreading its nostalgic brand of extravaganza and oohla-la to Denver and other major U.S. cities. (The show is also still running on Broadway, in Australia and in London’s West End.) The production is the latest chapter in the epochspanning fascination with the fabled Paris showplace. Adapted from Baz Luhrmann’s inventive 2001 film, Moulin Rouge! The Musical in style and spectacle lives up to movie critic Roger Ebert’s description of the movie as “all color and music, sound and motion, kinetic energy, broad strokes, operatic excess.” But what sets the stage, if you will, for the musical’s romantic and pop-song mashup about a young poet’s love affair with a beautiful Moulin Rouge cabaret star? Let’s rewind back to those heady times in the Belle Epoch era, when Paris was giddy with relaxed morals and waning class rigidity, and a host of new show palaces became all the rage.
APPLAUSE • MAY – JUN 2022 • 303.893.4100 • DENVERCENTER.ORG
