The Monegasque Cultural Association AIDA is particularly grateful to Michael Peagram for organizing, Saturday, April 28th, this evening celebrating the birth of Spring at the Château des Terrasses in Cap d'Ail, emblematic place of the cultural heritage of the Côte d'Azur.

 

This castle, built in 1890 by the British banker William Mendel, knows its heyday when in 1895 Tsar Nicholas II's brother takes up his winter quarters there. The house will receive Prince Albert I of Monaco, Queen Victoria, French President Félix Faure and many representatives of the artistic scene of the time.

 

In the 1930s, the castle was bought by the Vice-Consul of England, Mr. Buckingham.
In 2001 his son sells the castle to the city of Cap d'Ail which restores it to make it a high place of art and culture.

 

The evening revolved around an exhibition of watercolors by Joséphine Dionisotti and paintings by Cristelle Ferron, in a garden setting around an aviary of canaries and among the flowers. At the opening of the dinner, the Opera singer Délia Grace Noble spoke about the season of loves on a Carmen repertoire. Pianist Ashley Fripp describes the joy of renewal on Schubert's libretto and the beauty of nature so dear to Bach, before one of the guests, Carl Henry, takes the microphone to interpret some American standard romances.