Villa of Delirium

Villa of Delirium
Author: Adrien Goetz
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1939931819

"Terrific."—Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes and Letters to Camondo "Makes you want to travel, do somersaults and stretches, drink champagne in evening dress, read, think ... Intoxicating."—Publishers Weekly Along the French Riviera in the early 1900s, an illustrious family in thrall to classical antiquity builds a fabulous villa—a replica of a Greek palace, complete with marble columns and frescoes depicting mythological gods. The Reinachs--related to other wealthy Jews like the Rothschilds and the Ephrussis—attempt to recreate a "pure beauty" lost in the 20th century. The narrator of this brilliant novel calls the imposing house an act of delirium, "proof that one could travel back in time, just like resetting a clock, and resist the outside world." The story of the villa and its glamorous inhabitants is recounted by the son of a servant from the nearby estate of Gustave Eiffel, designer of the Paris tower, and the two contrasting structures present opposite responses to modernity. The son is adopted by the Reinachs, initiated into the era of Socrates and instructed in classical Greek. He joins a family pilgrimage to Athens, falls in love with a married woman, and survives the Nazi confiscation of the house and deportation to death camps of Reinach grandchildren. This is a Greek epic for the modern era.

The Villa Kerylos

The Villa Kerylos
Author: Carolyn Doggett Smith
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2010-01-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1450200214

During the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D., many citizens of Pompeii fled their doomed city to settle elsewhere in the Roman Empire. Among them were Gaius Tullius, his wife Ariana, and their infant son. They traveled to the family's estate in the hills overlooking Agrigentum in Sicily. There "Little Gaius"--Gaius Tullius Junior--grew to manhood, and it was expected that he would eventually take over his family's olive oil exporting business. But the business held little interest for Gaius Junior. As he approached his nineteenth birthday, he found himself increasingly drawn to the sea. He yearned to sail across what the Romans called "Our Sea" and visit strange and foreign lands. In time he prevailed upon his parents to let him go. The Villa Kerylos tells the story of Gaius's journeys--both his ocean voyages and his own voyage of self-discovery--not just from his perspective but also from those of his family, his ship's captain and friend, the merchants he deals with, and the woman who loves him. It tells of his dream of building a villa on an island: the Villa Kerylos, named for the sea-swallows that swoop and dive in the wake of his ship. It tells of his courtship and marriage, and the enduring truths he learns along the way. It is a tale of love and loss, adventure and peril, hope and despair, and the sheer joy of coming home at last.

The House of Fragile Things

The House of Fragile Things
Author: James McAuley
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2021-03-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300252544

A powerful history of Jewish art collectors in France, and how an embrace of art and beauty was met with hatred and destruction In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews—pillars of an embattled community—invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country’s army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps. In this rich, evocative account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siècle. Weaving together narratives of various figures, some familiar from the works of Marcel Proust and the diaries of Jules and Edmond Goncourt—the Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Cahens d'Anvers—McAuley shows how Jewish art collectors contended with a powerful strain of anti-Semitism: they were often accused of “invading” France’s cultural patrimony. The collections these families left behind—many ultimately donated to the French state—were their response, tragic attempts to celebrate a nation that later betrayed them.

Letters to Camondo

Letters to Camondo
Author: Edmund de Waal
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0374603499

A tragic family history told in a collection of imaginary letters to a famed collector, Moise de Camondo Letters to Camondo is a collection of imaginary letters from Edmund de Waal to Moise de Camondo, the banker and art collector who created a spectacular house in Paris, now the Musée Nissim de Camondo, and filled it with the greatest private collection of French eighteenth-century art. The Camondos were a Jewish family from Constantinople, “the Rothschilds of the East,” who made their home in Paris in the 1870s and became philanthropists, art collectors, and fixtures of Belle Époque high society, as well as being targets of antisemitism—much like de Waal's relations, the Ephrussi family, to whom they were connected. Moise de Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with art for his son, Nissim; after Nissim was killed in the First World War, the house was bequeathed to the French state. Eventually, the Camondos were murdered by the Nazis. After de Waal, one of the world’s greatest ceramic artists, was invited to make an exhibition in the Camondo house, he began to write letters to Moise de Camondo. These fifty letters are deeply personal reflections on assimilation, melancholy, family, art, the vicissitudes of history, and the value of memory.

The Piano Student

The Piano Student
Author: Lea Singer
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Total Pages: 195
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1939931878

"Explosively passionate, this story of forbidden love and unmet potential is ... for anyone who’s ever felt the ineffable power of music." —Aja Gabel, author of The Ensemble The Piano Student is a novel about regret, secrecy, and music, involving an affair between one of the 20th century’s most celebrated pianists, Vladimir Horowitz, and his young male student, Nico Kaufmann, in the late 1930s. As Europe hurtles toward political catastrophe and Horowitz ascends to the pinnacle of artistic achievement, the great pianist hides his illicit passion from his wife Wanda, daughter of the renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini. Based on unpublished letters by Horowitz to Kaufmann that author Lea Singer discovered in Switzerland, this is a riveting and sensitive tale of musical perfection, love, and longing denied, with multiple historical layers and insights into artistic creativity.

Bunny

Bunny
Author: Lydia Moreno
Publisher:
Total Pages: 34
Release: 2021-12-07
Genre:
ISBN:

Bunny Mellon Style is the intimate story of one of the most unintentionally influential women of twentieth-century design. Learn how her style developed, take a look inside the family homes she designed, get the flavor of her collaborations with French designers of fashion and jewelry, and begin to understand her vast and lasting influence on the world of design. Original research by the authors uncovered Mrs. Mellonâe(tm)s personal writings and correspondences. They talked with people who knew her, who were employed by her, and who spent time in her home and gardens. From published works, they extracted information about personal relationships between Mrs. Mellon and Jackie Kennedy Onasis, designers Billy Baldwin, Balenciaga, Givenchy, and more. Blending stories and accounts from such a wide variety of viewpoints results in a unique perspective of this extraordinary woman who moved in the upper echelon of society but preferred not to be noticed in the public eye. This book reveals Mrs. Mellonâe(tm)s style in furnishings, art, and collectibles; her dietary habits and penchant for picnics; her personal investment in designing every aspect of her homes, secondary buildings, and gardens. Come away with the highest regard for a woman who was disciplined and self-taught, who loved learning from historic texts, who was accomplished in myriad ways, and who was as utterly unpretentious and down-to-earth. A foreword by her grandson Thomas Lloyd is both surprising and warm. An abundance of imagery is used, including professional and archival photography, watercolors, whimsical hand drawings, and sketches. Cover © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Used with permission of Isabelle Rey.

Performing Antiquity

Performing Antiquity
Author: Samuel N. Dorf
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2019
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0190612096

Performing Antiquity: Ancient Greek Music and Dance from Paris to Delphi, 1890-1930 investigates collaborations between French and American scholars of Greek antiquity (archaeologists, philologists, classicists, and musicologists), and the performing artists (dancers, composers, choreographers and musicians) who brought their research to life at the birth of Modernism. The book tells the story of performances taking place at academic conferences, the Paris Op ra, ancient amphitheaters in Delphi, and private homes. These musical and dance collaborations are built on reciprocity: the performers gain new insight into their craft while learning new techniques or repertoire and the scholars gain an opportunity to bring theory into experimental practice, that is, they have a chance see/hear/experience what they have studied and imagined. The performers receive the imprimatur of scholarship, the stamp of authenticity, and validation for their creative activities. Drawing from methods and theory from musicology, dance studies, performance studies, queer studies, archaeology, classics and art history the book shows how new scholarly methods and technologies altered the performance, and, ultimately, the reception of music and dance of the past. Acknowledging and critically examining the complex relationships performers and scholars had with the pasts they studied does not undermine their work. Rather, understanding our own limits, biases, dreams, obsessions, desires, loves, and fears enriches the ways we perform the past.

Village of Scoundrels

Village of Scoundrels
Author: Margi Preus
Publisher: ABRAMS
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2020-02-25
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1613125070

Based on the true story of the French villagers in WWII who saved thousands of Jews, this novel tells how a group of young teenagers stood up for what is right. Among them is a young Jewish boy who learns to forge documents to save his mother and later goes on to save hundreds of lives with his forgery skills. There is also a girl who overcomes her fear to carry messages for the Resistance. And a boy who smuggles people into Switzerland. But there is always the threat that they will be caught: A policeman is sent to keep an eye on them, German soldiers reside in a local hotel, and eventually the Gestapo arrives, armed with guns and a list of names. As the knot tightens, the young people must race against time to bring their friends to safety.