In Paris for the Prokofiev opera ‘Love for Three Oranges’ at Opera Bastille. A great production by Gilbert Deflo, with added action from circus performers – which made it really entertaining.

Amazing Impressionist and Post Impressionist collections at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

The museum is housed in the former Gare d’Orsay, an impressive Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900 on the left bank of the river Seine. The collection includes mainly French paintings and sculpture from the mid nineteenth century to World War I. It has the largest collection of Impressionist and Post Impressionist art in the world, with works by Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin and Van Gogh amongst others.

Claude Monet ‘Lunch on the Grass’ – detail (1865)

Fascinating day exploring the ethnographic collections at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris.

The museum holds a fantastic collection of indigenous art from Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas. It has a total of over a quarter of a million objects, of which about 3,500 are on display at any one time. I was particularly impressed with the Oceanic collection with fetish figures and masks from Micronesia, Papua New Guinea and Australasia.