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| Photo by Tiago Lucet-Rémy taken at opening match of World Cup, Stade de France |
Who would have ever imagined that I could become a rugby fan. I never much liked what the French call “American football” (the only true “football” for them is soccer and for short, they call it “le foot”); and until September 2023, I’d never watched a rugby match in my life.
So what happened?
First of all, friendship. Second, music. Yes, friendship and music brought me to this sport.
In past articles, I’ve written about my friend Tiago Lucet-Rémy, a singer and dancer who has been performing since he was 11. He is now 15, and since the World Rugby Cup kicked off last September 8th at the national stadium of France, he has been singing to live audiences of 80,000 and to millions watching around the world.
For the past five years, he has been a member of the Children’s Chorus of Opéra comique in Paris. His training consists of both singing and dance, and the chorus, known as “la maîtrise populaire de l’Opéra comique,” has as one of its missions to step outside the elegant theater home to Opéra comique and take music to the world.
That mission was a motivating force for “la mêlée des chœurs,” an initiative of Opéra comique and the organizing committee for the rugby championship, with the participation of the French Ministries of Education and Culture, along with many teachers and students from all over France.
First of all, “la mêlée des chœurs.” That’s a hard one to translate. “Mêlée” is a French rugby term. In English, it’s a “scrum” or “scrummage,” not a very pretty-sounding word. And it refers to a rugby formation that resembles two giant centipedes going at it head-on, their many legs trembling till suddenly, one of those unwieldy creatures lays an egg. That’s how it looks to me, and how one team or the other takes possession of the ball. Each centipede is composed of three rows of players, heads down, shoulders locked as, with their feet, they try to kick the ball outside the scrum towards a member of their team (8 players make up each scrum and 7 others wait for a chance to pick up the ball).
Rugby connoisseurs will forgive me, I hope, if I didn’t get it quite right. As for the “mêlée des chœurs,” it’s a blending of the voices of the children of France. Guided by the know-how and the experience of the singers of Opéra comique, 7000 French youth have become part of the “mêlée,” and at each of the 48 matches of the world championship, in stadiums across France, a choir of 300, with in the vanguard 30 singers from Opéra comique, sing the national anthems, in the original languages, of all participating teams.
For months, Tiago has been learning them by heart in English, Spanish, Welsh, Romanian, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Georgian and Gaelic.
Now it’s down to two, New Zealand and South Africa, the winners of the semi-finals. The final match is Saturday, October 28th, in the national stadium, just outside Paris in the town of Saint-Denis. The New Zealand anthem is in English. The youth choir can sing the South African anthem in Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans and English!
If you can tune in, the pregame show begins at 2:30 PM EST and the first scrum is at 3 PM (9 PM in France). Tiago and a choir 300 strong will be there to sing the anthems. Members of la maîtrise of Opéra comique will also be performing in the pregame show, singing and dancing, directed by international pop star Mika, a singer-composer born in Lebanon to Lebanese-American parents.
Mika was born in 1983. He had to leave Lebanon because of war when he was 8 years old. His family settled in Paris and later moved to London. Mika is a man of the world and a man of peace. He knows how to bring out the best in the children he is preparing for the show. In Paris, they have been practicing together for weeks.
But what about the game? To tell the truth, I never expected to make it beyond the singing of the anthems, but the game and the players drew me in. At first it was pure shock: What! They have no protection! And they’re being thrown around like that!
Though I could recognize certain similarities to American football, I became acutely aware the players’ only protection was mouthguards and the occasional very flimsy looking leather helmet (something more like a winter cap). It’s no surprise the game includes what’s called a “blood replacement”: one player comes on the field while another moves to the sidelines to get the blood wiped off his face.
In the past six weeks, I’ve also seen more cauliflower ears—up close—than I’d seen in my whole previous life.
Once I got beyond the shock, I tuned into the strange combination of power and grace of this very rough game. These big bulky men jump so high! They run so fast and their sideway passes, their fancy footwork, seem more the stuff of dancers than of athletes who must draw on deep reserves of raw strength.
Two 40-minute periods separated by a 10-minute halftime, few if any timeouts, players are constantly on the move and, as opposed to American football, each player can play many roles: defense, offense, the kicker, star quarterback. True, specialists step in for the incredible “flying kicks” needed to score a field goal, but on the whole, rugby is a game of true teamwork, where there are no stars.
A quote about rugby has been attributed to Winston Churchill, “Rugby is a game for hooligans played by gentlemen.” I get it. These big hulking men I would not like to meet in a dark alley, participating in the roughest sport I’ve ever observed, play like gentlemen—especially when compared to what I’ve observed in French soccer.
The Irish writer Oscar Wilde quipped that “rugby is a good occasion for keeping 30 bullies far from the center of town.”
They may look like bullies, it’s true, but this World Cup has taught me a lot about what it means to be a team player and a true athlete. For that, I thank Tiago and the mêlée des chœurs.
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| La mêlée des choeurs and a player from the Fidji Islands, Tiago front and center. |
