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Laurent came from a totally stride of life than I. Classical Music I heard in my childhood at my Grandparents home and during Opera performances - the few I attended - I fall regularly asleep. So much surprising was my acquaintance with him . It was an eye opener and his acquaintance enriched my live. Laurent was a well-known French conductor, who lived for months in the Colombe d'OR to find here, in the artistic, historic environment, the inspiration for his first composition of a modern opera - "the Elephant Man." To write an OPERA in our time - was a veritable Challenge. Modern operas had not found a home in the circle of Opera fans. Perhaps the last known and recognized composers were GUSTAV MAHLER and IGOR STRAVINSKY but that was at the beginning of the turn of the century - then perhaps Aribert Reimann's "Lear" in 1978.
This however did not perturb Petit Girard spending months there, writing his Opus. A Composition that years later is performed in opera houses in Nice, Prague, Minnesota and many more.
He finished the work two days before New Year and we spent New Years’ Eve together at a dinner in the restaurant. Laurent told me that he had reached the stage of total exhaustion, and his new year’s resolution was the renunciation of all female temptations. In principle he was ready to die - he was fifty-nine. But death follows his own timetable. Four months later I got the message that he had married an attractive Italian actress and was about to start a new life. I was invited but did not want to appear with Martha for fear of a possibly scandalous performance and her lust to be the centre of attention. Later I met Laurent on various occasions in Paris - secretly in the Italian Pavillon of the Royal Monceau.
"You have to rid yourself of this woman."
He said to me.
"She is bad and will pull you down. She is Mischpoke"
Using the derogative jidish name for a family of bad background. "At the end it will end in tragedy. That is what I feel."
This was exactly the experience that hit me many years later - Laurent had the intuition and the sensitivity of an artist. I should have followed his advice earlier, that was what I thought later.
Ooo
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