Lanuéjols Town HallFestival Paths of Tolerance - Cabaret-Strolls through the Century
Lanuejols
Museum Overview
The 12th edition of the Festival will have the theme: "Happiness, a new idea in Europe". Meetings, debates, conferences, concerts, shows, readings aloud and discoveries will be interwoven throughout the Cévennes region, bathed in light.
Contemporary debates, literary, philosophical or historical conferences, concerts, theatre performances, readings aloud, thematic exhibitions, convivial evenings will follow one another during the summer, in the form of several focused events offered in Valleraugue and numerous events in several surrounding Cévennes villages.
The upcoming festival will explore the concept of happiness, addressing numerous topics evocative of both simple and grand pleasures, as well as human practices that offer a particular conception of happiness. Eighteenth-century aristocratic life seems preoccupied with the obsessive pursuit of new pleasures. Social forms of entertainment command all attention, such as court dancing, hunting with hounds, and seduction conceived as a parlor game. The licentious and libertine art of Claude-Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon reveals a marked taste for sex and eroticism. The art of the English or French garden contrasts the idea of wild, supple, and languid nature with the rigor of aligned plants, immaculate gravel, and upright trees characteristic of topiary. Fashion and ribbons offer a majestic sense of fleeting frivolity and enduring beauty.
Pride is exercised in the drawing room, and one would gladly sacrifice oneself for a brilliant conversation and a few notes on the spinet or harpsichord! Everything is a game and a showcase, and more than ever, a society detached from reality develops its passions and claims its right to pleasure more than ever! This society of the Ancien Régime mocks life and swallows its own existence like sparkling wine, between two jibes.
Conversely, in towns and villages, in an unspeakable and invisible world, the people barely survive between forced labor and chosen work where they can realize an ideal, particularly artistic or literary, or even legal and commercial, where an arrogant young bourgeoisie hopes for a more harmonious future, regarding its place in the political management of a country thirsting for change...
More contemporary themes will also be addressed, such as the approach to the History of Climate, education for biodiversity, and finally the demand for respect for living things and the natural realities of the territory, through meetings but also through the involvement of participants in artistic workshops.
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