Our Vice-President, Calypso de Sigaldi, is pleased to invite you to join her at the 10th Monaco Book Fair, organized under the High Patronage of HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, by the Association Rencontres littéraires Fabien Boisson, on June 19 and 20, 2021 for a signing session of her book which revisits the great hours of the Belle Epoque.

 

Murmures de Belles Dames de la Côte d´Azur (Whispers of French Riviera Ladies), A book in the form of a historical fresco

 

Calypso de Sigaldi revisits the spirit of the Belle Epoque (1870-1914), with its art of living, its great artistic movements, its technological progress, its scandals, its courtesans, its political life ... through the prism of four great villas that are the pride of the Côte d'Azur. They rustle little stories that very often join the Big ...

The villas "Les Cèdres", "Ephrussi de Rothschild", "Primavera" and "Kérylos" draw up their impetuous silhouettes between Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and the Principality of Monaco to tell us about the delights of this Belle Époque which saw them born.

Behind the sweetness of these French Riviera Folies hide the more contrasted lives of those who’ve built them, in an eminently creative historical period, however clouded by territorial struggles, political cleavages and resentment, which will be the bed of the great evils of the 20th century.

We follow the fate of their famous builders, such as the controversial Belgian King Leopold II or Beatrice, the granddaughter of the founder of the French branch of the Rothschilds. We meet Alphonse Lenoir and Théodore Reinach, two privileged witnesses of a Third French Republic heckled with deep ideological divisions and marred by politico-judicial scandals as resounding as the Russian Loan, the Panama Canal and the Dreyfus Affair.

We meet Queen Victoria, Franz Joseph of Austria, Napoleon III, the tragic fate of Maximilian of Mexico, like the lightness of manners of a time when courtesans were worshiped. They are all there, from the very aristocratic Countess of Castiglione to the adventurous Mata Hari. We meet the characters who inspired the work of Marcel Proust and we deplore the twisted spirit of a political environment, brilliantly illustrated by the Tiger Clemenceau. We immerse ourselves in a Principality of Monaco which is building its success on the ruins of a country cut off by 80% of its territory and we discover a renovated Brussels, to cross the wonderful new Haussmannian Paris, from its lowlands to the most chic districts. The spirit of the times is breathed in the bend of a time when pleasures are never far from drama and where failure comes at the cost of life. We follow the epic of our beautiful "ladies" who will know how to reinvent themselves, to become part of contemporary history.

There are four, they are crazy, they are beautiful…. Although firmly planted on their French Riviera foundations from the Belle Époque, they reinvite themselves to travel around the world and over the centuries. They rustle whisper little stories which very often intersect with the Big One.

 

Calypso de Sigaldi

More used to publishing articles in various fashion and social magazines, Calypso de Sigaldi is committing her very first book here, in the form of a historical fresco revisiting the Belle Époque, through the prism of four mythical villas on the French Riviera. She spent her life and her career hesitating between her passion for visual arts and literature, trying to reconcile the two. This Monegasque who grew up in Paris decides, fifteen years ago, to leave the cocoon of the world of fashion and advertising to discover her family cradle, on a Côte d'Azur that she thought she knew, but that she finally discovers with the candid amazement of those who are not used to see shades of green and blue all year round, dotted with intense pink or yellow colors, depending on the season. Very naturally, she took an interest in this Belle Époque, the foundation tima of the immutable reputation of the French Riviera, to discover the personal history of the characters who've built their houses as an heritage, testifying of the grandeur of their convictions and the excess with which they affirmed them.

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