SCÈNE 2 Anastasie

Mesdames et Messieurs, please take your seats for act 2 of La Diva. Curtain is rising!Please make sure that your volume is up so you can hear the sweet sounds of La Diva and click on the photos to see the details. And don't forget to use the sidebar French vocabulary for the theatre so you can keep up! Enjoy!

It was a face that time forgot. Isabeau and Hermione the rose fairy were greeted at the garden gate by Hortense the garden spirit. "Her age is unknown for she has been here since the beginning, pouring forth blue-green waters from her soul to nourish the land" said Hermione. " Isabeau had never seen the likes of such a person or place; an enchanted water garden as blue as her feathers, a face as timeless as eternity, but pale was the landscape on the horizon outside of the gates. Great, still buildings of stone replaced gently swaying trees that loomed over her delicately feathered head as they left the enclosure. The structures appeared as little miniatures from a distance, but their stature suddenly swelled to an unimaginable eminence as they approached. "We have arrived." whispered Hermione.



"I will show you to your chambers" said Hermione. There was a strange beauty about the palace, unlike anything that Isabeau had ever seen in the forest or in the water garden. She was mesmerized with the golden chairs and looking glasses and crystal droplets hanging from the ceilings. These unusual baubles were unlike the gentle tears of rain that fell from the sky in joyous harmony, but rather like dew drops caught in a moment of beautiful silence.


There was a chasm however, between her and this new beauty. Unable to touch the objects with her wings or sit on the sumptuous chairs, a new emotion pierced her heart; she was unable to sing. Hermione led her to another garden of thick grass where lay a beautiful, old box. Hortense appeared and said, "Before you are able to reside in the palace and sing before the world, you must do something very important, Isabeau. You must lay in this sarcophagus and die. You will lay down as a simple creature of nature but rise up from the great waters as the Diva you were meant to be.




After one day and one night, Isabeau arose from a burst of clear water as a beautiful maiden with wheaten hair that reached to the ground. She no longer shimmered in the blue of gossamer dust, but twinkled in the pale, translucent fragility of a spring rain.


She was escorted back to the castle and was given a special place in the residence filled with luxurious furniture worthy of a Diva...



and made her debut on stage accompanied by the most harmonious instruments.



She dazzled her audiences on stage with grand operettas; the more she sang, the more intense the color of her hair became. She was the Diva that the kingdom had been looking for. She was passion itself.





Isabeau was a success. With hair as red as the roses of Hermione's dress and long and endless as Hortense's rivers of water, she was the most beautiful Diva that ever sang in Anastasie. However, when she looked at herself in the looking glass, she had forgotten who she once was for she was overwhelmed by who she had become.

La fin de scène 2

Entr'acte

More champagne and hors d'oeuvres in the lobby! Curtain goes up in one week for act III. Start thinking about how YOU want to end this play in act IV. So come next week with your playwright thinking caps and pens in hand and take notes; someone is going to be the author of act IV and the winner of a give away, to be announced next week. Alors, A votre santé et à la prochaine!

All text and photography (as silly as it is!) is the property of Camille Benoit of Castles Crowns and Cottages!
Paintings by:
Rosetti "Lady Lilith"
John William Waterhouse "Undine", "Invidiosa" and unknown name