A Singer’s Life: Strasbourg
There is a marvellous old Scots word, used to describe a teacher’s pet, or someone who you suck up to - “Sook”. This is one of several words in the schoolboy’s lexicon to denote a fellow pupil for whom one does not have a high opinion. Another is “Clype”, a tell-tale, and, of course, there was the obligatory, and not particularly Scottish, “Swot”. Now, all these words belong to an era long ago (my childhood!), when being a teacher’s pet or a tell-tale were terrible things. In our modern age of mindfulness and openness, the idea that one suffered bullying and worse and kept one’s mouth shut (a sort of kailyard omerta) seems bizarre, as does the fact that transgressions were punished by grown men striking small children on the hand with a thick leather belt. The phrase, “it never did me any harm”, was trotted out frequently to excuse this weird honour system.
My reason for this apparently mad first paragraph is that today I’d like to write about a European city which is very dear to the heart of the splendid founder of this website, Hugh Kerr. Hugh was, in a former life, an MEP at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and indeed with his trusty colleague, Nana Mouskouri, was responsible for music policy in the Parliament from 1994 -1999. I wish, therefore, to make it clear, that I am not in any way being a sook to my dear and much esteemed colleague, Mr Kerr, in writing about this wonderful city, where his star shone so brightly!
I was fortunate to be engaged twice at the Opéra National du Rhin at Strasbourg, once for ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ in 2000 and then again for John Adam’s ‘Doctor Atomic’ in 2014. These two operas, premiered almost 100 years apart (1902 and 2005), are two of the best shows I have performed in. There is a magnificently tenuous Scottish thread which links them too. The original Mélisande, Mary Garden, was a famous Scottish soprano, and the original conductor of ‘Doctor Atomic’ in San Francisco was my old school friend, Donald Runnicles, who I interviewed for the EMR earlier this year.
Strasbourg is a splendid city, more or less beside the river Rhine, and right on the border between France and Germany, in the much fought over region of Alsace. The centre of the city has grown up on a large island between the river Ill and its canalised arm, the Canal du Faux-Rempart, but the modern city, with a population of about 500,000, stretches east to the Rhine, and over into Germany at Kehl. Like all of Alsace, it is a fascinating mixture of two very different cultures. It looks German but sounds French. Its cuisine and wine are similarly a complete mixture, with the best of both cultures producing a gastronomic and vinous delight. I’ll explore some of that later, but we need to look a little at the history of the town and the region to try to get a handle on its soul.
The city grew out of the Roman encampment Argentoratum, first mentioned in 12 BC. Whether there was silver here, or whether silver was bought and sold, is unknown, but the city which emerged, and changed its name in the early middle ages, celebrated its 2000th anniversary in 1988! The name change identified it as Strassburg or Strasbourg (fortification on a road), and this describes its position at a crossroads, north and east into Germany and then Russia, south to the Alps and Italy, and west to France and the Atlantic Ocean. Throw in a mix of two great languages, French and German, and you have reason enough for a serious settlement to establish itself.
The great red sandstone cathedral, built entirely in the mediaeval period, was started in the 11th century and finally completed by 1439. Although there are still Romanesque features, the building is largely seen as one of the finest Gothic cathedrals in the world, and its steeple dominates the area round about. Indeed, from 1647 to 1874, it was the world’s tallest building, and, even now, at 142 metres (466 feet), it is the sixth tallest church on earth! The area around the cathedral is a warren of narrow streets and alleys and there are still some splendid old buildings to see. Further west, where the river Ill tumbles over a weir, the area known as Petite France attracts many tourists for its picturesque combination of water and pretty buildings, where, in the middle ages, the tanners plied their trade. The opera house was opened in 1821 and stands proudly at the end of the long rectangular Place Broglie. It is a delightful theatre, seating just over a thousand people, with a lovely acoustic and an attractive auditorium. Much of Strasbourg was damaged by allied bombing in WW 2, but it has been well-restored, and is a lovely town to stroll round, as it is all very flat. The climate is most agreeable, and I have happy memories of both stays there. I can’t remember where I stayed during ‘Pelléas’, but for ‘Dr Atomic’, I rented a wonderful Renaissance house very near Petite France, with old wooden beams and quirky furniture. To get to our rehearsal studio, I took a bus which followed the Ill for a while, passed by the University, and carried on to the railway station. The district where we rehearsed was fascinating, as there was a very large Jewish population who lived there. I discovered that Strasbourg is home to the largest Jewish group in France, an interesting historical footnote, since the Nazis were particularly brutal to that religion during the occupation from 1940-44.
There is a very extensive German district, built up after the previous German occupation after the Franco-Prussian War in 1870/71. Strasbourg remained under German/Prussian control from 1871 until the end of the First World War in 1918 and had time to take on the full mantle of Kaiser Wilhelmian architecture during that time.
Away from the centre, and towards the Rhine, the Quartier Européen has grown up around the many buildings associated with the Parliament, the most impressive of which is the European Court of Human Rights Building, designed by Richard Rogers, and completed in 1994. It ended up being much bigger than envisaged, since in 1989, the Communist Eastern Bloc collapsed, and soon new countries were clamouring to be admitted to the EU. This whole quarter is very impressive, if somewhat soulless, and, as Hugh Kerr knows, a lot of important work goes on there. What a great job he did there with Nana. Did I mention that he founded the Edinburgh Music Review?
Not far from the Quartier Europeen, lies the lovely Parc de l’Orangerie, with its Pavillon Joséphine, designed for Napoleon’s first wife, Joséphine, she of “Not tonight” fame. It is a very large park, with a small zoo (a French habit which I am not comfortable with, due to the poor conditions suffered by the animals and birds) and wide open spaces. For me, the best feature was the sight of several storks, which nested in the trees of the park and on the roof of the pavilion. For ‘Dr Atomic’, I was in Strasbourg for the spring and the storks had just arrived. The whole middle Rhine valley, from Mainz and Karlsruhe down to Freiburg in the south, is a magnet for storks returning from Africa to nest, and it is magnificent to glimpse these majestic birds, who often build their nests in church towers.
Strasbourg is a fantastic city, both in its own right and as a centre for touring. To the west, and slightly to the north, there are several small towns devoted to beautiful, glazed pottery, and moving south, between the Vosges Mountains and the Rhine, lie the wonderful vineyards of Alsace. Nestling against the lower slopes of the Vosges, the Route des Vins (or Weinstrasse) takes you through villages and towns of spectacular quaintness, ancient centres of viticulture, and gastronomic excellence. Most of the older locals speak a Germanic dialect which is largely impenetrable even to German speakers, but since the region has remained French since 1945, French is spoken everywhere. It is actually very interesting to note that Strasbourg is something of an island of Frenchness in a sea of German language and culture (similar to Brussels being an island of French in a sea of Flemish), and the French government has made sure that there will be no return to German hegemony, either cultural or political, any time soon!
The wines are fascinating, as they also reflect the mixed cultural influences which have dominated the region for centuries. Since Alsace is the coolest wine region in France (temperature not trendiness!), the grape varieties used are similar to those in the neighbouring German wine regions, mainly Riesling, Gewürztraminer and Pinot Gris for whites, and Pinot Noir for the reds. White predominates, but there are small areas where red is king, for example, St-Hippolyte, a lovely village nestling in the shadow of the great hilltop fortress, Haut-Koenigsbourg which produces a richly flavoured red wine, unsurprisingly called Rouge de St-Hippolyte. Fran and I usually stay in the Hotel à la Vignette in the centre of the village, which has lovely rooms, a great restaurant and allows you to wander up into the vineyards easily. Unlike most Alsace wine villages, it is not mobbed by tourists, and it is a delight to stroll round before dinner listening to the church bells. It looks like all the other quaint half-timbered villages in Alsace but has a French name and produces red wine. Bizarre! In the next village to the south, Rorschwihr, we discovered one of Alsace’s greatest small growers, Rolly-Gassmann, a going concern since 1676. On our first visit in the 80s, we stumbled upon this grower completely by chance. Knocking on the door, we asked if we could sample some of their wine. A little lady in her sixties showed us into their cellar, and we proceeded to taste 140 different wines starting from very dry whites to super sweet botrytis affected marvels. Botrytis is a fungus which shrivels the grapes, but somehow creates the spectacular sweetness you find in Sauternes, Tokaj and Germany and Alsace. Called Noble Rot, it produces a honey-sweet wine which Fran and I find specially wonderful and delicious. All Rolly-Gassmann wines have a slight sweetness to them, even the very dry wines. If this sounds like a contradiction in terms, I can only recommend that you look out for some of their wine. Raeburn Fine Wines in Stockbridge in Edinburgh usually stock some Rolly-Gassmann.
Alsatian cuisine is also one of the wonders of the world. Somehow, they take many of the ingredients found in standard German cooking and transform them into something elegantly French. This is not to disparage German cooking, which has almost as bad a press as British cooking. I have had many superb meals in Germany, and challenge anyone to say its cuisine is lumpy and stodgy, as the myth goes. Certainly, like British cooking, our lifetime has seen a complete change in the style of German cooking, but it was never that bad before. Mind you, we were once in Trier on the Mosel River in the early 80s, and one of our friends asked for a dish without meat. The look of bewilderment on the restaurateur’s face was priceless, and the plate of vegetables which arrived, having extracted the meat and added an extra portion of green stuff, was predictably dull, if nicely cooked. Now, of course, there are lots of Vegetarian and Vegan restaurants in Germany and Alsace, and our predicament in Trier is a thing of memory and legend. One of the most astonishing things about the cuisine in Strasbourg is the ubiquity of shellfish and seafood in general. Alsace is hundreds of miles from the sea, and yet, fresh seafood arrives every day at most of the top restaurants. Non-seafood specialities to look out for are Choucroute and Tartes Flambées. Sauerkraut, literally sour cabbage, has been a staple of German cooking for centuries, raw cabbage fermented by lactic acid bacteria. So far, so yucky. It’s actually surprisingly delicious and, with the addition of varied sausages, ham and pork, extremely filling. You can eat it all over Germany, and you will not need to eat for another day. Somehow, in Alsace, with the addition of some Alsatian wine, and a little magic, it can turn into a mouth-watering delight, relatively light and fluffy. Most restaurants in Strasbourg will offer a variety of choucroutes. The Alsatian answer to pizza is the Tarte Flambée, or Flammkuchen, literally pie baked in the flames, which comes in various guises, but is basically a rectangular or round sourdough base rolled thinly and topped with crème fraiche and little cubes of bacon called lardons, cooked in a wood fired oven. It’s really nothing like pizza but is absolutely delicious.
You can see that I am very fond of Strasbourg and would encourage anyone to visit. I haven’t even had time to tell you much about the marvellous trips you can make over the border into Germany, especially to the south where you can drive along the wonderful Hochstrasse, the highland road through the Black Forest down to Freiburg, a splendid city with another fabulous red sandstone cathedral. Superb wines can be found in Baden-Württemberg. Check out the Kaiserstuhl, a volcanic outcrop just east of the Rhine, covered in vineyards, selling excellently priced fine wine. Back across the border from the Kaiserstuhl brings you to the beautiful old city of Colmar, where you can see one of the finest paintings of the late mediaeval period, the Isenheim Altar, by Matthias Grünewald, in the Unterlinden Museum. From Colmar, take the Route des Vins through the Alsatian vineyards, passing Kaysersberg, Riquewihr and Ribeauvillé, all gems of Alsatian architecture. Returning to Strasbourg, relax by the river Ill with a cool glass of Kronenbourg, as advertised by Eric Cantona!
Then, of course, you could go to the opera!
