GEO correspond-il à vos attentes ? - Les Suds à Arles

Made
in Arles
The Amphitheater, or Arena, has better withstood the test of
time, though its soil has soaked up unimaginable quantities of blood
over the years. Built in the 1st century A.D., it seated 20,000 spectators
who came to watch gladiator combats, small game hunts and
prisoner executions. During the Middle Ages, squatters built a veritable
village of more than 200 houses inside its walls. After their eviction
in 1830, the Amphitheater hosted its first courses camarguaises
(games of skill against bulls) to cel-
Bernard Coutaz
moved his three-year-old company,
Harmonia Mundi, from Paris
to a hilltop in the Luberon in 1961.
Since then, this risk-taking independent
label has built up a large
and loyal fan base with a winning
formula: exploring lesser-known
music, signing and developing new
artists, and using period instruments
when possible. One of its
early ventures involved recording
music played on historical organs
throughout Provence.
In 1986, the mayor of Arles
offered to rent the company a
collection of farm buildings, including
a lovely Provençal mas,
just outside the city center. The
entire complex included some
100,000 square feet, and Coutaz
leaped at the chance, selling his
Luberon property and investing
the proceeds in the business.
In the years since, the company
has branched into publishing and
become renowned worldwide for
reviving Baroque music; it now has
distributors in 60 countries as well
as 44 stores in France and three in
Spain. “Between 2001 and 2006,
the recording music industry lost
50 percent of its market,” says
Coutaz. “During that same period,
our sales went up 30 percent.”
That said, Harmonia Mundi has not
been immune to the recent economic
turmoil; Coutaz notes that
sales are down 7 percent this year
compared with 2008.
The company’s flagship shop
is located in Arles’s historic center
and sells CDs as well as books.
Nyssen has no problem with that,
saying that Arles can easily accommodate
both companies. “You
might think that Harmonia Mundi’s
store would have eaten into our
profits, but it has only increased
our sales. The more cultural activity
there is here, the more people
come. I am sure of it.” —AS
Two of France’s most successful
purveyors of culture have long been
based in Arles—a small city far removed
from the glitz and glamour
of Paris’s intellectual and cultural
scene. The publisher Actes Sud
took up residence here in 1983,
and the classical music label Harmonia
Mundi followed in 1986. Between
them, they provide work for
several hundred people in this city.
Both houses are independent,
built from the ground up to
become leaders in their fields.
Belgian native Hubert Nyssen
created Actes Sud in 1978 in the
Provençal village of Paradou,
where his daughter, Françoise,
soon joined him. Shortly afterward,
she met Jean-Paul Capitani, an
Arlesian who owned a large family
property—a former dairy—in the
city. They became personal and
professional partners, converting
the space into offices as well as
a bookstore, restaurant, cinema
and hammam. Together they built
Actes Sud into a major publisher
with a yearly turnover of €70 million
and a roster of big-name authors
that includes Paul Auster and
Stieg Larsson, the late Swedish
creator of the Millennium trilogy.
Sitting at a leather-topped desk
with a plane tree outside her office
window, Françoise Nyssen recalls
the early days, when it was difficult
to convince writers even to send
manuscripts. “At the time, Paris
was where everything happened,
but our philosophy was simple.
Why shouldn’t you pursue the career
you want, where you want to
live? We made the best of it. And
then, once we got fax machines,
then the Internet and the TGV, the
tables turned and it was obviously
more advantageous to be here
than in the capital. We have fewer
distractions. And we have the Provençal
sunlight.”
Bernard Coutaz was equally
attracted by the quiet when he
ebrate France’s capture of Algiers.
They still take place here, as do
Spanish-style corridas.
The Romans may have had no
problem killing people within city
walls, but they insisted on burying
the dead outside of them. Just beyond
the stone fortifications is the
Alyscamps necropolis, famous as the
final resting place for Saint Genest,
a clerk beheaded by the Romans because
he refused to sign death sentences
for Christians. (The religion
took hold early here.) The cemetery
became the point of departure for
medieval pilgrimages to Santiago de
Compostela and later inspired paintings
by Van Gogh and Gauguin.
The Dark Ages saw Arles repeatedly
sacked by barbarians, but by the
12th century, it was thriving again as
a free city and an important capital
of Christianity. Romanesque constructions
from this era include the
gorgeous Eglise St-Trophime, with
the Last Judgment carved on its portal.
War and plagues cut short this
golden age, and the city languished
until the 16th century, when a Dutch
engineer tamed the swampy Camargue
by building canals. Landowners
grew rich and built impressive hôtels
particuliers in the city, while King
Louis XIV’s official architect, Jules-
Hardouin Mansart, helped design
the majestic City Hall. These days,
skateboarders practice on the square
in front of the building while a Communist
mayor presides within.
In recent years, sophisticated
hotels and restaurants
have sprung up all
over town. opposite:
The elegantly spare spa
at the Hôtel Particulier,
housed in a 19th-century
mansion. below: A delectable
Jerusalem artichoke,
parmesan and truffle
mousse by two-star chef
Jean-Luc Rabanel.
Tourism was an obvious option
and now represents more than half
of the city’s economic activity. Efforts
to further enhance Arles’s re-
markable historic heritage are ongoing: The Théâtre Antique and the
Amphitheater—both black with age—are in the midst of a 10-year
restoration. Work should be finished in 2012, but already the contrast
between the untouched and the newly cleaned stones is striking. At
the same time, an American organization called the World Monument
Arles’s most recent decline was brought on by neither barbarians
nor plague but rather by the end of the Industrial Age, during which
the town flourished thanks to its rail-repair yards. Opened in 1856, the
Ateliers SNCF, as they became known, were long a pillar of the local
economy. But technology did not keep pace with the times, and by
the mid-20th century, the yards, originally designed to service steam
locomotives, were hopelessly outdated. The SNCF finally closed
them in 1984, precipitating an economic catastrophe from which
Arles has yet to recover. “The city lost its bearings,” says Silvie Ariès,
a journalist for La Provence newspaper. “It had to reinvent itself.”
France • summer 2009 43