Musique

France has long had a major presence on the world musical scene. In 1669, Louis XIV founded the Royal Academy of Music, and, since the 19th century, Paris has been a major concert venue for the greatest piano virtuosi of Europe (Liszt, Chopin, others). In the second half of the century, France was the world’s leading venue for lyric opera. In 1966, seven years after André Malraux became France’s first minister of culture, an office of music was created under the leadership of Marcel Landowski, whose support for the popularization of music bore fruit (in June 1982) in the form of the first Fête de la Musique, which has since spread to 120 countries and 350 cities. Plus...