Turkish Season in France ends with Musenna performance

Turkish Season activities in France ended Tuesday night with a performance of "Musenna," a stage show combining elements of the performing arts with court music from European and Ottoman palaces, in the opulent Versailles Palace opera building in Paris. The closing ceremony was held with the participation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and French Senate President Gerard Larcher. Delivering a closing speech at the show, Erdogan said, "Turkish Season in France, which lasted nine months, is the longest and most comprehensive activity Turkey has ever organized in a foreign country." "Musenna," a project by French-Turkish musicologist and soprano Cimen Seymen, mixes opera, dance, acting, acrobatics and shadow play with humor and poetry. Before reaching Paris, the show had drawn favorable reviews in other French cities,. Erdogan said the word "Musenna" has many meanings. "I want to highlight one of them," he said. "It means 'to write a word or a sentence together with its reflection in a mirror' in traditional Turkish handwriting. One of the words looks to the East, and the other to the West, but they face each other. Both are the same word and have the same meaning. Turkey and France have always been two countries looking at each other from the East and the West and delivering messages of friendship and peace." He added, "Famous French writer Amin Maalouf's works, which feature the East through the language of the West, are very meaningful in how they show the engagement of our culture, language and even fate." Thanking France for hosting the event, Erdogan said Turkey and France are not unfamiliar with each other. "Just like King Francis I and Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent shaped a common history, we will shape a common future together," he said. "As a majority-Muslim, secular country, Turkey reflects a synthesis of the East and the West, and the North and the South. Its European Union journey is the best platform to show this synthesis. I believe Turkey's EU membership will be one of the most important peace projects in world history." In his closing remarks, Larcher called Turkish-French ties indispensable. Noting that relations between the two countries date back more than 500 years, Larcher underlined the importance of stronger Turco-French ties for the region. Stating that Turkish culture was introduced to France with more than 600 activities in 120 cities during Turkish Season, he said, "This event also played a role in accelerating bilateral relations."