July 14, 2003

• Funeral or Wedding?

  
  

  From the New York Times of

  
  

  Bastille Day, 2003:

  
  
  
  
  

  Isabelle d’Orléans et Bragance, 93, Dies; Was the Countess of Paris By WOLFGANG SAXON Isabelle d’Orléans et Bragance, Countess of Paris, who was married to a pretender to the throne of France, died on July 5 in Paris. She was 93. The countess was the widow of Henri, Count of Paris, whom many royalists wanted to become King Henri VI of France. He died in 1999, and the couple’s eldest son, also called Henri, claimed the title of Count of Paris and Duke of France, becoming the new pretender. Her full name was originally Isabel Marie Amélie Louise Victoire Thérèse Jeanne of Orléans and Bragana, or Bragance in French.

  
  

  The Countess was associated with the

  
  

  ville d’Eu in Haute-Normandie.

  
  

  The patron saint of the ville d’Eu is Lawrence O’Toole, also the patron saint of Dublin, Ireland.

  
  

  He is known in France as Saint Laurent, and here is a picture of his chapel near the ville d’Eu:

  
  

  

  
  

  Two pieces of music seem appropriate to memorialize both the dark and the bright sides of life on this Bastille Day.

  
  

  Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings was played at the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco, and so should be sufficiently royal for the Comtesse de Paris.

  
  

  For the midi, click here.
  (Piano arrangement by Brian Robinson.)

  
  

  Cole Porter’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” originally sung (in a 1943 film) by Don Ameche, will serve to recall the bright side of life.  It was written after the 1931 Palermo wedding of the Comtesse but may, in a jazz arrangement, be pleasing to St. Norman J.  O’Connor, the jazz priest in my entry of July 5 — the date of death of the Comtesse, who may or may not have also been a saint.

  
  

  For the midi, click here.
  

  
  

  

  
  

  “Now you has jazz.”
  – Cole Porter, High Society
  
  

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