Rugby, Music, Friendship: International cooperation in time of war

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 8^th 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 28^th, 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.

 

La mêlée des choeurs and a player from the Fidji Islands, Tiago front and center.

Two Wooden Horses Come to Life

 

I never thought that two wooden horses discovered in a museum in Chantilly, France, could set in motion such a flood of Pennsylvania memories. Thanks to two carousel horses, hand-carved at the beginning of the 20^th century in Philadelphia, I embarked upon an extraordinary journey back and forth across the Atlantic, with significant stops in Germantown, Reading, Hershey, and Port Carbon.

The museum I was visiting is the Musée du Cheval, created in 1982 and dedicated to horses. It occupies the “Grandes Ecuries,” the Great Stables of the seventh Prince of Condé, grandson of King Louis XIV. An avid hunter, he commissioned architect Jean Aubert to construct a home for his 240 hunting horses. The result was a masterpiece of 18^th century art and architecture, an equestrian palace that, in 2019, celebrated its 300 birthday. 

Today the Grandes Ecuries, part of the Domaine de Chantilly, which includes a vast wooded park and a turreted chateau surrounded by water, are home to horses that perform for the public and live in spacious, well-tended boxes, where visitors can admire them. 

The wing of the museum dedicated to equestrian arts and crafts is off to the side, in the carriage barns, and many visitors pass it by. Its collections include the tools and equipment of horsemanship, and works of art such as 6^th century Chinese terra cotta horses and stone mosaic tiles representing horse and rider executing complex figures of dressage.

There are also the two wooden horses acquired by the museum at the time of its renovation in 2013. And here is where things get interesting.

Those horses were made by two Philadelphia master craftsmen. The elder, Gustav Dentzel (1846-1909), was the teacher and also a father figure for the younger, Daniel C. Muller (1872-1952). Dentzel was born in Prussia, and when he immigrated to the United States in 1864, he may have brought the first carousel to North America. Daniel C. Muller began his training with Dentzel. He also studied sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. These two men created some of the most prized carousel horses in the world. 

Daniel C. Muller at work

In the Germantown sector of Philadelphia, D. C. Muller founded his own carousel company in 1903. His horses were anatomically realistic, dramatic, fanciful in detail. He was an artist, which is why his creations are so valued today; but working slowly, he could not keep up with the competition. In 1914, his company shut down and he went to work for another Germantown carousel maker, the Philadelphia Toboggan Company founded in 1904 by Henry Auchy and Chester Albright. The horses he sculpted for PTC, as the company became known, are among its finest. As a child at Hershey Park, I surely rode on one.

 

The Hershey Park carousel in 1950

In 1991, PTC changed its name to Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters Inc. Today company headquarters are in Hatfield, PA. In the 20^th century, PTC created 87 wooden carousels, approximately 35 still in operation today.    

As the company’s name suggests, it also creates rollercoasters. In the last century, it manufactured 147 wooden coasters, 82 of them still running. I’m ready to bet many readers have been to Knoebel’s Grove. How many of you have taken the Phoenix? It is a product of PTC. The man who designed it, Herbert Paul Schmeck, was born in Reading in 1890. Between 1923 and 1955, one year before his death, Schmeck designed 84 coasters for PTC.

His first, “the Wild Cat,” went to Hershey Park. Schmeck, who became a master of coaster design, began at PTC as a carpenter. He had no formal training as an engineer, but he learned to read blueprints and create one of the most thrilling rides in any amusement park, where passenger safety is paramount.

The original "Wild Cat" at Hershey Park

Knoebel’s Phoenix, before arriving at the park in 1985, had already had a long life as “The Rocket” at Playland Park in San Antonio, Texas, where it was first mounted in 1947. As the original blueprint was no longer in existence at the time of its transfer, each board had to be numbered, and those numbers served to put the coaster back together again. Think about that the next time you’re being cranked to the top of the Phoenix, about to rise from your seat and go screaming down the other side!

Milton S. Hershey’s last purchase for his amusement park was for “the Comet,” another Schmeck creation. Hershey purchased it in 1945. The Comet is still providing thrills today. 

When I was a little girl, my father held me tight while we careened down a steep flume and plunged headlong into the churning waters of the Old Mill at Hershey. That ride was also built by PTC. In 1963, it name was changed to “Lost River.” In 1973, it was replaced by the “Coal Cracker,” for once, not manufactured by PTC.

An aerial view of the Old Mill next to the Comet circa 1960

After all this talk of rollercoasters, I must make another French connection. The very first rollercoaster ever was inaugurated in Paris on April 13, 1817. It was called the “Promenade aérienne,” the air-walk. Passengers had to walk up steps to sit on a bench and then ride down a 600-foot ramp at 40mph. 

The world's very first roller coaster in 1817 in Paris, France

These many ups and downs make me eager for my most beloved ride, the most regal in any amusement park, and here I’m finally returning to the merry-go-round. 

Those two wooden horses in Chantilly are cousins, once removed to another continent, to those of the merry-go-round in Hershey Park, manufactured by PTC, where Daniel C. Muller worked while it was being crafted. It arrived in Hershey in 1945, but had already been providing rides in other parks since 1919. I remember when it was located next to Hershey’s Spring Creek. In the evening, looking out at the dark water, clinging to the rose-bedecked mane of my mount, I felt like Maid Marion riding with Robin Hood through Nottingham Forest.      

From Chantilly to Germantown to Hershey and finally, to a park once just outside Port Carbon. When my mother drove on route 209 through East Norwegian Township, she would reminisce about Dream City, also known as Schuylkill Park. In the 1930’s, she went there to her very first dances. I remember the decaying dance hall. She also rode “Dips,” a PTC coaster built in 1922, removed in 1937.  

Those two wooden horses, like Pegasus, have transported me through time and space to a treasure-trove of PA memories.