Les Mariés de la tour Eiffel

About the show

The story of the ballet is somewhat nonsensical: The new couple have a wedding breakfast on Bastille Day (July 14) at a table on one of the platforms of the famous tower. A guest makes a pompous speech. When a humpbacked photographer bids everyone to "watch the birdie," it appears that a telegraph office suddenly springs into existence on the platform. A lion comes in and eats one of the guests for breakfast and a strange figure called "a child of the future" appears and kills everybody. Nevertheless, the ballet concludes with the end of the wedding. When asked what the ballet was about, Cocteau replied: "Sunday vacuity; human beastliness, ready-made expressions, disassociation of ideas from flesh and bone, ferocity of childhood, the miraculous poetry of everyday life." On 29 July 1923, in a letter, Francis Poulenc described the work as "toujours de la merde... hormis l'Ouverture d'Auric" ("yet more shit... apart from Auric's Overture").