A talented and promising actor who combines Screen and Stage acting in his curriculum, Daniel is known for The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Melinda and Melinda (2004) on the big screen. Daniel is also in his third season as Franco Rivera in the TV hit show Rescue Me. Daniel can be seen on stage in Cyrano, starring Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner, which opened on November 1st, a week before the Strike put the Broadway show on hold.

A brilliant violinist himself, Gabriel Banat is the ideal biographer of Saint-Georges. Born in Hungary and encouraged by Bartók, Banat spent most of World War II in hiding from the Nazis. After the war, he performed with Enesco and others, becoming a member of the New York Philharmonic in 1970. His new biography, Virtuoso of the Sword and the Bow, was called a “must read” by Today’s Books. Robert Gutman described it as “the first truly reliable account of the dazzling career of the Chevalier de Saint-Georges … a page-turner … beautifully written.”

A veteran Hollywood UPM and Executive Producer, John is known for Chicago (2002), The Scarlet Letter (1995) and Legends of The Fall (1994), as Line Producer or Unit Production Manager. John also did the budget for Mel Gibson’s The Patriot (2000).

For more information on the American Association of Teachers of French, visit: http//www.frenchteachers.org/

PORTRAIT CACHE is a cultural program dedicated to influential biographies.

DVD: Le Mozart Noir
CDs: collection from Avenira Foundation, Cedille, Arion..
Books: from Alain Guede, JA Rogers, Antonia Fraser..

the only opera composition by Saint-George fully restored today

Curiously, Marie Antoinette’s well documented relationship with Le Chevalier de Saint-George is not mentioned in Fraser’s novel. Nonetheless, the movie should substantially increase interest in the Saint-George story.

Saint-George: …Loïc Félix
Louise Fusil: …Christine Rigaud
Marie-Antoinette: …Sophie Fournier
Sophie Arnould: …Catherine Dune
Lamothe: …Rodolphe Briand
Duke of Orléans: …Didier Henry

Conductor: Bertrand Cervera
Producer: Nadine Duffaut
Choreographer: Eric Bélaud

An initiative by the Concert de Mr Saint-George Association,
Under the patronage of the city of Avignon, France

A confidant and music instructor to Marie-Antoinette, Saint-George was a superstar violinist and opera composer who influenced Mozart. He was also Europe’s fencing champion, an infamous playboy, and a military hero in the French Revolution.

Griot producers see “Chevalier” as the natural evolution in the recent explosion of period-piece fare. “Saint-George was adored by the French and British public as a music and fencing superstar, but he is only recently being re-discovered because much of his musical material was destroyed during the French Revolution, and later, by Napoleon’s regime.”

Current Attendees: Gabriel BANAT (violin, NY Philharmonic), Michelle GARNIER PANAFIEU (music researcher, Paris), Claude RIBBE (Historian, Philosopher, Paris), Daniel PICOULI (Novelist, Paris), Alain GUéDé (Journalist, France), Daniel MARCIANO (Novelist, Screenwriter, Fencing consultant, France), Alain BUFFON (Finance Historian, Guadeloupe), Alexis BIQUE, Allan BADLEY (CEO Artaria music production, NZ), Gérard LAFLEUR (Historian 18th century), Laure TRESSENS (National Archives, Guadeloupe), Mark CLAGUE (Music Historian, LA), Roland BRIVAL (Novelist, Martinique), Bernard MAGNIER (Music critic), Dr Dominique René De Lerma (Professor, Berkeley), Guy MONDUC (Historian of freemasonry), Myriam ALAMKAN (Naval Historian), Sylvie CHALAYE (Sociologue, Historian of Black Theater, Guadeloupe), H & D PARISIS (Historian of Industrial Architecture), Marie-Christine HAZAËL-MASSIEUX (Historian of Creole Language), Jean-Marie BRETON (Researcher Civil Status in Guadeloupe), Tony DUNOYER (Art Entertainment, NY) , GRIOT Entertainment (Film Production)

The program will include concerts, book forums, short films and lectures.

Attendees:
Jean-Claude HALLEY (Friends of Saint-George Society), Dominique DeLERMA (Music historian, Berkeley), Kwame RYAN (Conductor, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra).

The Mayor of Pointe-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe) will host a conference on the Chevalier de Saint-George.

Moderator: Jean-Claude HALLEY
President of the Friends of Saint-George Society

Le Maire de Pointe-à-Pitre
Le service d’Animation du patrimoine
de la ville de Pointe-à-Pitre
vous invitent à la conférence donnée par :

Jean-Claude HALLEY
Président de l’Association des Amis du Chevalier de Saint-George

sur le thème :
Le Chevalier de Saint-George ;
au-delà du Musicien
au-delà de l’Escrimeur, l’Homme !

Article for Le Figaro (August 26, 2004), by Armelle Héliot.
The Spectacle of Versailles
This year, the nighttime entertainment on the grounds of the château is an equestrian and pyrotechnical symphony dedicated to a surprising figure that we have been learning about for some years, Joseph de Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George, a refined swashbuckler and man of the Enlightenment, son of a slave-girl named Nanon and an aristocrat, born in 1745 in Guadeloupe and died in Paris in 1799. A mulatto raised like a prince, intelligent and daring, cavalier of the King’s Guard, seducer, secret agent, colonel of a regiment of Africans and Antillese in Revolutionary Year II. He is a cross between Laclos and the Chevalier d’Eon, General Dumas and Philippe Egalité, Mirabeau and Haydn, since Saint-George was indeed a musician according to his biographer, Claude Ribbe, who also wrote the entertainment’s script.

The choreographed horses in the show are the work of Bartabas, founder of the equestrian theatrical group Zingaro and director of the Grande Ecurie at Versailles.
In the court and garden, two horseways lead to a platform, a large surface installed over the Basin of Neptune. […] On the steps—8,000 spectators, with some on the edge of grass, in the cool air!—they will applaud these colorful scenes (costumes by Marie-Laurence Schakmundès), in a fluid sequence where sounds (the careful and passionate André Serré), voices, music, and not a few horses, Lusitanians, Criollos, Argentines, in the field, in the park, horses from Zingaro and from the Académie, plus those pulling carriages, will call to each other in the night. And the moon will be full, and you will dream of sweetness and wonder.

I’ve added the links in the quoted sections. I love the fact that this sort of spectacle is being produced again at Versailles, which was created as the grandest possible stage for the day-to-day staged drama that was the life of Louis XIV. It reminds me, but is only a modern shadow, of some of the incredible entertainments hosted by the Roi-Soleil, like Les Plaisirs de l’Isle enchantée, staged from May 7 to 14, 1664. It was the first grand celebration given by the King at his new home, in honor of his mistress Mlle de La Vallière.

Maguy Cohen
PRODUCER/WRITER/DIRECTOR
Maguy Cohen joined Griot Pictures in 2006 as a co-producer on the period piece Chevalier. Miss Cohen graduated at USC film school in 2000 and also attended a two years program at the Oxford School of Drama. Miss Cohen began working for Warner Bros. in various departments, also head of the music scoring stage. Over a course of 5 years, she also worked as an assistant for numerous directors and A-list actors. In 2004, she began directing commercials and music videos worldwide.
She is co-producing an independent docu-drama The Peculiar Patriot, an urban “Fahrenheit 911″ produced by Griot Pictures. Miss Cohen is preparing to direct and produce Them, her first horror thriller, and also she is producing and writing action/thriller Vanished, based on a dual French/English script, to be produced 2007. Miss Cohen has an extensive knowledge in music and productions.
A native of France, Maguy Cohen has lived in many countries – France, Switzerland, Haiti, Italy and Israel, where she was enrolled in the Israeli Army, and was put in real combat situations.

Thomas Hopkins
PRODUCER