The Bataclan, by Carol Drinkwater

In less that two weeks time, 8th March, it will be the publication date for the paperback of THE LOST GIRL. I have already written here on our lovely HG site about the inspiration for the modern half of the story, which is partially set over the weekend of Friday 13th November 2015 when a series of coordinated terrorist attacks hit Paris, killing over one hundred and injuring more than four hundred.

In THE LOST GIRL, an Englishwoman, Kurtiz, is still looking for, praying to find, her teenage daughter, Lizzie, who has been missing for four years. For reasons revealed within the novel, Kurtiz believes that Lizzie is attending a rock concert, an Eagles of Death Metal concert, which is performing that Friday evening at the Bataclan concert hall, 50 Boulevard Voltaire, not far from Bastille in Paris.

I thought this month I would pull up a few facts about the famous old theatre, the Bataclan, that witnessed such horrors on that fateful night. It is a very curious looking building, Chinese-style, and rather stops you in your tracks if you happen to walk by it without knowing of its existence.

Here is a photograph with its original pagoda:

And in 2008, without the pagoda:

As you can see from the photos, at some point during the twentieth-century the pagoda was removed. With or without its crown, it is an odd piece of architecture for central Paris. It was designed by the architect Charles Duval in 1864 and opened its doors for the first time in February 1865.
Duval, who was trained by his architect father, was also known for his design of another theatre in Coulommiers, east of Paris. He loved theatres and had originally dreamed of becoming an actor.

Why such a piece of chinoiserie? I have no precise answer except that France was taking an avaricious interest in China at this time, gaining in Indo-China. It originally entered Vietnam to give itself a southern foothold into China. France was determined to upstage the British and its holds within the Asian continent.
Between 1857 and 1860, France joined forces with their rivals, the British, to fight the Second Opium War. So, stories from the Far East would have been regularly reported in the newspapers.

The Bataclan theatre's original name was Le Grand Café Chinois. Opulent, capacious cafés were very à la mode in Paris during this period when the theatre and revue scenes were really flourishing. Some of the largest in the world such, as Le Grand Café Capucines, are still going strong. Capucines draws in a huge tourist trade as well as the audiences from the opera at the celebrated Palais Garnier, which is just across the street and was a new attraction to the city back then. An architectural masterpiece finally completed and opened in 1875.

The audience at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens, the birthplace of Jacques Offenbach's operettas (1860)

When it first opened its doors, Le Grand Café Chinois was a lively dance and music theatre with its stage and bistro/bar on the ground floor and an immense dance floor up on the higher level.
During the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, it was used as an ambulance base. Around this time, after the brief war, France's defeat and the fall of its Second Empire, although I cannot pinpoint the precise date, this appears to be when Le Grand Café Chinois was rechristened. It became Ba-ta-clan and then Bataclan. The nomenclature Ba-ta-clan is interesting because it refers to the title of an operetta,  a"chinoiserie musicale" by Offenbach first performed in 1855, but performed at the Bataclan only in 1885.

Ba-ta-clan is also French slang for 'all that jazz'.

The music hall changed management yet again in the 1890s when it was bought by a famous café-concert singer, Paulus, who towards the end of his career made a series of five short films with George Méliès entitled Paulus Chantant (1897). When showing the films, Méliès had Paulus sit behind the cinema screen and sing the song of the title, thus giving the illusion of cinema sound. Alas, these films appear to be lost now. I have searched all over to find them.

Amongst Bataclan performers at the turn of the century was Buffalo Bill Cody. By 1910, just after the death of Paulus, it offered almost exclusively revue-style shows. For its time, it was 'trendy', offering opportunities to young, up and coming artists such as Mistinguet, Maurice Chevalier and Edith Piaf. Rolling Stone magazine much later described it as, 'one of the funkiest music venues in the city.' Even back at the beginning of the twentieth century that description appears to have been appropriate.

                                                        Mistinguet, actress-dancer, 1900

In 1926, due to financial difficulties, the place changed ownership once more, but this time it was transformed into a cinema and remained a cinema until 1969 when after refurbishment, it was re-opened as a concert hall.

I cannot describe how thrilled I was when I discovered the period of the building's life as a cinema.

My second leading character in THE LOST GIRL is Marguerite, an eighty-something retired actress. She walks into the bar where Kurtiz, anxious and uncertain, has settled for the evening, to await the news of her daughter. The two women, seated alongside one another, begin to talk, sharing confidences; intimacies you might only divulge to a stranger.
All the while, although unbeknownst to both women at this stage, the terrorist attacks are beginning to unfold. The Bataclan was the last location of the evening to be targeted.

I was able to use the Bataclan in both the women's stories. When Marguerite was a teenager dreaming of the silver screen, she needed a humble part-time job to feed and keep herself in Paris while she was looking for, auditioning for her "big break". The idea of her selling tickets at a cinema was perfect, she would be quite naturally drawn to cinemas. The Bataclan then, a cinema in post-war Paris. There, quite by chance, she meets a young Englishman who falls in love with her and their stories become intertwined.

No spoilers.

One of the great joys of the research work for a novel or film is discovering threads that can be knitted together. I never know where my stitches, threads, will all lead when I begin to write, so when something pops up at you that you feel instinctively is a gift, the work becomes very exciting.
Film, photography, the stage, all of these are subjects that both women in the book are passionate about. These interests bond them. However, as their stories unfold, as the horrors of the coordinated attacks are revealed, we discover that there is another element, far less expected, that brings these two female strangers together. One that neither could have envisaged at the beginning of the evening when they were both strangers sitting alongside one another, ordering their drinks.

The Bataclan has an audience capacity of 1,500. It was packed to the gills on that fateful night in 2015. I discovered the horrors of what was taking place on that Friday 13th on television when I switched it on to watch the news.
I have written a short piece for the Penguin website,
https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/features/2018/feb/carol-drinkwater-thelostgirl/

about my inspirations for THE LOST GIRL.
The Bataclan and its history is certainly a rich part of my story.

On 11th March 1991, the Bataclan was listed amongst the Monuments Historiques of France.

                                                    Sting's concert 12th November 2016

After the attacks, the venue was closed for refurbishment and as a mark of respect for the lives lost. The city was in shock, grieving. The ghosts haunted the music hall, haunted the neighbourhood. It re-opened its doors one year later on Saturday 12th November 2016, the eve of the anniversary. Sting was the performer booked to bring the venue back to life, to make the first step towards exorcising the demons. The concert sold out in minutes even though the nation's reaction to staging a performance there, so soon if ever, was received with a mixed range of emotions.

A formidable security operation was put in place for the reopening. Streets were cordoned off and were patrolled by heavily armed police and CRS, riot squads. Extraordinarily, courageously, some of the audience who had been present at the Eagles of Death Metal concert, 364 days earlier, returned. Several explained to the media that it was really important for them to be there. To celebrate the music, to begin to live again. To help the healing process. That Saturday's edition of the daily newspaper, Libération, praised those who were going to be present; christening them, Génération Bataclan, for their opposition to intolerance and for their faith in France's future.

An organisation has been founded, Génération Bataclan. Its members are fighting to have a memorial, a statue or monument, erected across the street from the Bataclan, to commemorate those who lost their lives during those tragic attacks.

Here are two from the short list of ten proposed:

Regeneration, beginning again, is at the very heart, the core, of THE LOST GIRL.

13th November 2016

        President Hollande, on the first anniversary of the attacks, laying a wreath outside the concert hall. He and Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, visited each of the six sites where the massacres had taken place one year earlier, and read out the names of everyone who had been injured or murdered. France remembers.

'Rock on, Noble House,' as I have heard say in France of this revered establishment, the Bataclan.

One last link, if you have time and enjoy popular music. The late Jeff Buckley played the Bataclan to tremendous acclaim on 11th February 1995. His concert has become legendary in the world of rock greats. Here is his rendition of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah It is available on his short album, Jeff Buckley Live From the Bataclan.

It seems a fitting tribute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8AWFf7EAc4

I sincerely hope you will enjoy THE LOST GIRL. The reviews have, so far, been amazing.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

A new step forward in France, by Carol Drinkwater

We have a new President.
The whole world has learned by now that France has voted for Emmanuel Macron, the youngest man to step into this role since Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon III.
Born in Paris on 20th April 1808,  Louis-Napoléon became President on 20th December 1848.

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew and heir of Napoléon I, was the first head of State to take the title of President and he was the only President of the Second Republic. Barred from running for a second term, he organised a coup d'etat and took the throne as Emperor of France on 2nd December 1852.  He remains the longest serving Head of State in France since the French Revolution, and died in exile in England in 1873 after the fall of his Empire in 1870.

Emmanuel Macron steps into the role of President at the age of thirty-nine and six months so just a tad younger than France's last Emperor, making Macron the youngest President in French history.  Does his age matter? Yes and no. His youth and energy are seen here as a breath of fresh air. His beautiful wife Brigitte Macron is over twenty years his senior making him, I believe, a man with an individual spirit who follows his own path, his own destiny. I watched a clip of their wedding recently and was charmed by the way he spoke so openly about embracing their age difference. I find it quite remarkable when one considers the chauvinism so often shown in politics.

I, we, hope that this mindset will bring courage and a new way of thinking to French politics. Most here are saying that the country is in dire need of reform. Yes, there is much that needs to be addressed - our very high unemployment figures (around ten per cent), the weight of bureaucracy in the public sectors - both are two concerns regularly cited.
Another urgent issue is national security. We are a country that has been living in a state of alerte rouge since January 2015. Over the last two years, France has been the victim of several monstrous terrorist attacks. In these last two and a half years, close to 300 people have been murdered during or as a result of these attacks. Macron's opponent, the far right candidate, Marine Le Pen, has been suggesting measures which would alienate the large Maghrebian (north African) population here in France, would close down our borders, take us out of Europe and do away with the euro. Fortunately, Macron has opposed all these proposed policies. During the televised debate between Macron and Le Pen just days before the second and final round of voting, Macron stood firm against her accusations when she shockingly threw the word 'traitor' at him because he had visited Algeria and stated that France did not behave well during its years as an imperialist power there and that some of the acts perpetrated against French colonial citizens were crimes against humanity. It took great courage and integrity to stand firm on national television, peak viewing, to repeat his position. I agree with Macron. Like him I also believe that until France takes responsibility for its past, healing and social meshing cannot take place.

I have written about France and its Algerian history in other History Girls posts: http://the-history-girls.blogspot.fr/2015/01/je-suis-charlie-carol-drinkwater_26.html  and  http://the-history-girls.blogspot.fr/2015/02/a-potted-history-of-french-algeria.html

The terrorists who perpetrated the appalling attacks here, from Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 onwards, are, or were, members of and trained by ISIS/Daech. They are not necessarily directly related to France's colonial past except that many of the disenfranchised north Africans living, in most cases, in very difficult conditions on the outskirts of French cities have been easy pickings for the terrorist organisations. These second and third generation French citizen youths are without work, living on the fringes of our society, despised and looked down upon by a percentage of the population and their rights and needs are not always being met. How easy then to lure them into acts against the establishment, to stoke up within them the hatred and anger necessary to commit such atrocities. The solid impenetrable establishment does not want to hear that France owes a great debt and more than an apology to the citizens of its colonial past. Macron's words were not easy to hear for many and were outrightly denied by others, such as Marine Le Pen.
It is a breath of fresh air to hear a politician say that his nation must take responsibility for its crimes before any future can be built. I applaud Macron for not buckling at the possibility of losing votes because of the position he had taken.

My new novel, THE LOST GIR, to be published in just over a month on 29th June in the UK is set in two locations and several time zones. At its heart it is a contemporary story which begins the night of Friday 13th November 2015 in Paris. That night there were six terrorist attacks all within the eastern quarters of Paris. Over 200 people were murdered many of them youngsters attending a rock concert at the Bataclan concert hall near Bastille.

How did this book come about? The evening of the terrorism in Jan 2015 really affected me and set the tone for my response to the 13 November attacks. My husband was in Paris when the Charlie Hebdo attacks took place. He was working at his office which in those days was one street away from the CH offices. Naturally, I was terrified when I heard the news before I knew the precise location. Once all was revealed, I learned from Michel, my husband, that he had worked with one of the illustrators who was murdered that late afternoon.
The fact that it was a colleague, someone just one step away, a man working in the arts, not a close friend of Michel's but a respected colleague, this really shook me up.
Freedom of speech, freedom to believe whatever one chooses as long as it does not cause harm to others, freedom to love whomsoever one chooses, as long as we are not talking about minors or unwilling partners. These are at the heart of French values, a cornerstone of this society. 2015 was a turning point for me in that I recognised how living in France has transformed me. I also realised that speaking out and mourning publicly for the victims was essential. I felt that I had to stand up and be counted.
THE LOST GIRL was in gestation, I see now, even before the night of 13th November.
That evening I switched on the television to see the news which is not something I am in the habit of doing. I was standing with my mother in the living room and together we watched the events unfolding. I was weeping. Mummy said to me, talking particularly about the young who were trapped as hostages within the Bataclan where two gunmen were shooting, picking off audience members one after another in cold blood 'Everyone of them is someone's daughter or son. Mothers are waiting everywhere to hear the news.'
My story was seeded, although I did not know it that evening. Several days later, I put aside the novel I was at work on and began to write ...

Kurtiz is an Englishwoman, a renowned photographer who has become estranged from her actor husband. Their marriage fell apart when their sixteen-year-old daughter, Lizzie, went missing from their London home four years earlier. Out of the blue, there is a sighting of Lizzie in Paris. Kurtiz's husband, Oliver, firmly believes his daughter will be at the Bataclan rock concert and he goes there in search of her. Kurtiz is waiting in a nearby bar for news, for a meeting, for a craved-for reconciliation.

THE LOST GIRL is a love story with plenty of drama. At its heart it is a tale of new beginnings, of second chances, of learning to forgive and to seize the moment and live.

France has voted, not for extremism and fascist knee-jerk reactions, not for closing down its borders, but for new beginnings, for building upon the knowledge that within its recent past, the nation, the ruling powers, have committed crimes. With an open heart, the long slow journey towards healing and creating opportunities for those who have been left out in the cold, can begin.
I am feeling optimistic.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

I wrote this blog and posted it at the beginning of this week. A day later, Manchester in the United Kingdom was hit. A suicide bomber waited to explode his foul ammunition on young people preparing to make their way home from a rock concert. First,  my sincere condolences to those who have lost members of their families. R.I.P to those who lost their lives. I pray that those who were injured may recover speedily. Lastly, huge respect to the citizens of Manchester who handled the abomination with such compassion. During my time researching The Lost Girl I spent a month watching filmed material of the events of that night in Paris and the long harrowing days that succeeded it. One of the most remarkable things I took away from all that I watched was the generosity of the Parisians, the French. Blood was given, doors left open. Everyone was on hand to help do their bit to counter the ugliness of such an atrocity. In all the war zones I have visited for my work and travels, for the research for The Lost Girl and for all that I have read over these last few days from Manchester, I have been deeply moved time and time again by our ability to express compassion and generosity to others who are suffering. Man's indomitable spirit. Our kindness, our desire to reach out and offer a hand to another in need. I hope these qualities come across in my novel and I sincerely pray that these are the energies that will overcome these appalling waves of terrorism.