New vision this Monday morning: there was no queue in front of the Louvre pyramid. “ To limit the spread of Covid-19, the Louvre seeks to limit its attendance. Visitors with e-tickets and those benefiting from free admission have priority and will be able to enter the museum alone, ”read the rare visitors at the entrance.
The announcement by the Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, created a wave of suppressions or postponements of cultural events. To the point of worrying an environment that has already suffered greatly from the strikes last December. " We are in a state of psychosis, there is a very marked decline in reservations, an uncertainty which is detrimental to the entertainment world is in the process of settling down, " deplores Jean-Marc Dumontet, head of six concert halls.
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What is a gathering of a thousand people? Should we count the artists and the staff? It is up to theaters to be creative in playing with their gauge. Le Châtelet (2010 places) maintains Room With a View but interrupts rentals to play in front of half-rooms. Chaillot claims that it has two rooms, Gémier (390 seats) and Vilar (1,170 seats), which it limits to continue playing. The Montpellier Opera reduced its tonnage to 800, knowing that 200 people working on the show will be added to the spectators.
The Paris Opera cancels until March 11 but keeps in camera the representation of Manon which must be captured this Tuesday for cinemas. La Cigale gives two Nada Surf concerts in front of twice 500 people the same evening. In Lyon, the Maison de la danse plays by limiting its gauge, as does the small room of La Seine musicale in Boulogne-Billancourt. But, planned in the big one, the 32nd edition of the Festival Chorus (from March 25 to 29) is canceled. In Strasbourg, the Opera panache canceled and maintained events.
"We can only suffer"
Postponing the date is another solution: for the concerts of Ninho, M. Pokora, Andrea Bocelli, Tryo, Queen and Adam Lambert at the AccorHotels Arena, or the tour of Rock Legends, in homage to Supertramp and Dire Straits (except in Lyon today). However, the Philharmonie de Paris (2,400 seats) canceled all the concerts in the large Pierre Boulez hall until March 22.
In turn on Monday, we learned that the contemporary art fair Art Paris planned at the Grand Palais and that of Art and Design, at the Tuileries, were postponed to May. The gala dinner at the Center Pompidou scheduled for March 31 has been postponed to the end of June and Art Paris postponed to the Pentecost weekend. But the Salon du dessin planned at the Palais Brongniart from March 25 to 30 is holding up. The organizers specify however that they will " reinforce security and prevention measures ". This is what the Drouot-Richelieu auction room was already experimenting with yesterday by implementing counting measures for its sales.
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"We can only endure, the next fifteen days will be calm," sadly sums up David Rebouh, co-producer of the musical Le Tour du monde en 80 jours at the Mogador Theater, which has just limited its gauge to 950 spectators (instead of 1200) . In the private theater, the rooms of small and medium gauges await the customer. " The latter is still coming, but we are stretching our backs, " explains Pierre Arditi on tour throughout France with Michel Leeb.
Cinema side, since the postponement of the release of the new James Bond, other film releases have been postponed to later dates, but Disney maintains the release of Mulan on March 25 everywhere in the world except in China.