Make a date with Monaco

Monaco Mayor Georges Marsan in the centre and team

As well as being the body which organises the regular fairs that punctuate the Principality’s calendar at Port Hercule (Christmas village, National Day fairground, etc), the town hall is responsible for the Salle du Canton concert hall in Fontvieille and the Jardin Exotique.

Some key musical dates to note are as follows:

Saturday 22nd March at 9pm: singer-composer Renan Luce in concert in the Salle du Canton.

Friday 23rd April at 9pm: Coeur de Pirate with Béatrice Martin, 19, who has made her name via the internet and given only four concerts since she started writing her own material in 2007. Also in the Salle du Canton.

Monday 21st June: the annual free-for-all Fête de la Musique features local bands in venues all over the city, culminating at the port with a big concert by Caligagan and PEPs in the evening.

23rd June to 16th August in Square Gastaud: delightful outdoor musical evenings in this pretty Condamine square. Jazz on Mondays, gypsy music on Wednesdays plus four new events for 2010 – café theatre, rock, soul music and African percussion.

23rd to 24th June: Fêtes de la Saint Jean offers two days of traditional entertainment, folk music and dancing, bonfires and fireworks, and solemn religious processions on the Rock and in the Moulins district. It’s all to celebrate the birth of John the Baptist, and the victory of the light of Christ over darkness.

Saturday 24th July: Medieval Day when the streets on the Rock and the square in front of the palace are transformed into how they would have been in the 13th century. Children’s workshops, traditional craftsmen, concerts and mock battles are just a taster of what is on offer – a different way to view the Rock.

Meanwhile, Monaco’s own exotic garden, the Jardin Exotique, has a full programme for spiny and succulent plant lovers in early summer. Events include workshops on keeping Brazilian cacti (2nd to 5th June); an exhibition on the French naturalist who preceeded Darwin’s theory of evolution, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (9th to 11th June); and butterflies (17th June to 21st July) plus the Monaco Cactus Expo (12th and 13th June).

New for this year is that the gardens are organising an event (free entry) for three of the four dates of the annual International Fireworks to Music competition. What better place to watch the spectacle in Port Hercule than the Jardin Exotique? The dates and countries competing are: 9th July at 10pm – Ukraine; 22nd July at 10pm – Italy (Marcel Poudre in the Jardin Exotique; 13 August at 9.30pm – USA (Jardin Exotique event to be announced); and 26 August at 9.30pm – Spain (the town’s Jazz Orchestra in the Jardin Exotique).

 For more details, see The Riviera Times each month. CL