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NICE CARNIVAL / CARNIVAL OF NICE
Nice France : the city of French Carnival
 A holiday of balls and masquerades
From the end of the XIII-th century, the fame of the carnival of Nice is underlined in the local chronicles during the stay in 1294 by the count of Provence Charles II, duke of Anjou, come to Nice " to spend there the joyful days of carnival ". From
1388 (dates in which the county of Nice looks itself to Amédée VII, count of Savoy), the dukes of Savoy stayed frequently in Nice in period of carnival, as duke Emmanuel-Philibert in 1577 and 1578. The carnival preceded the period of the fast accompanied with a series of festivities: balls, masquerades, dances, fires of enjoyment, exhibitions of jugglers and mimers, tables put in streets. Unsuccessfully, the Church tries to channel the most rough and obscene aspects of the holiday. Ecclesiastical prescriptions in the XVII-th century order the priests at the risk of fine or of prison " not to dance, either in public, or in private, not look at people who dance, not to wear long hair, long beards, red or green shoes in public. Do not walk come night, not sing profane songs in streets, not execute pieces of music, not mask ". But in vain: In the town well protected inside its bulwarks, the carnival takes place happily, under the control of the property managers of the city, who, by an edict of 1539 (completed in 1612), name " abbots of the Madmen " in charge of organizing and regulating the festivals and the balls of carnival.
Balls took place right by the main centres of the urban activity: the ball of the nobility, on the place or the loggia of the ducal palace, the ball of the traders, the place of the Bishop's palace, the ball of the artisans, the place Saint-Francois, in front of municipal palace, the ball of the fishermen and the workers, place of Condamine. To circulate freely from a ball to the other one, it was necessary to be masked and " disguised suitably ", otherwise the Inhabitants of Nice were anxious to stay in the ball corresponding to their social class.
The abbots of the Madmen were in charge also of commanding the musicians of balls, of perceiving the right of tumult during remarriages and said pelota tax taken with the young couple of the year. |
The Italian-styled festival in the Century of the Lights
In the XVIII-th century, the festival changes face in the town of Nice. The city grows in the South, the Villanova, and on the right bank of Paillon. The population increases. A social distance begins to rack itself among the privileged (nobility, bourgeoisie) and the other classes of the society. The " aristocratic festival " divides up, isolates itself in closed rooms, at the governor or the others considerable. It's the same in Italy where luxurious balls are given during the carnival, in Venice, in Naples, in Rome (Veglione, Dreads), and know the celebrity beyond the borders.
In this "contraction" of the aristocratic festival inside the city opposes, in opened sky, and in the inner suburbs of Nice, the rural and popular atmosphere of the " feasts of fast ". These feasts were organized from the first Sunday by fast, on every Sunday (until Easter), in a district of Nice.
During revolutionary period, civil holidays replaced the religious and popular holidays. However the holiday was celebrated in Nice, on January 9, 1794, to the announcement of the resumption of Toulon by Barras and Bonaparte gave place to festivities of a sometimes grotesque character.
And so on the place of the Republic (today Garibaldi) one attended a parade of allegorical floats and so a stake was raised to burn " vile flags of the allied peoples ". |
The Sardinian restoration: on the parade
The consular and imperial period favours the organization of masked balls in the lounges of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. The popular demonstrations are, most of the time, organized and controlled by the religious brotherhoods.
It is during the wintry stay, in 1830, of the Sardinian sovereign Charles - Félix, accompanied by his wife and with her suivantes, that the grotesque holiday changes aspect. The carnival took place on the course Saleya (in the South of current Old - Nice), and notables of Nice organized a parade for the official reception in homage to the sovereigns. Aboard cars and aboard floats, they marched past in " rich suits under the balcony of the ducal palace where was held king ". A battle of flowers and candies in true candy sugar (coriandoli), or small dragées (confettis), undertook from car to car. There was also a resumption of masked balls in the ducal palace and of veglioni to the theatre.
Very fast, the usage of different missiles is established. The battles of missiles become the essential game of the carnavalesgue holiday. The local populations and the winter holiday-makers get involved, are in confrontation or encanaillent. The foot soldier holds the pavement, whereas the elite occupies the "smart" positions, windows and terraces of the course Saleya and the street Saint-François-de-Paule. The meeting, the clashes are made at distance, with noble missiles: bunches of flowers, candies, cigars, dragées, or more and more summary: beans, flour, eggshells filled with soot or with flour, chickpeas, balls in breakable dough, sawdust.
But the confettis of plaster become privileged ammunitions. With fighter's outfit, for the occasion: fenced in mask of protection, peels in confettis - sansoula - and big bag. In 1892, the confettis of paper will appear. During the years 1860-70, the winter season holiday-maker of Nice is of the most brilliant. The crowned heads appear on the lists of the foreign residents: the Russian, Belgian, English families, the king of Bavaria, Louis 1-st. The worldly holidays multiply and the winter holiday-makers participate in the big popular and dirty holiday of the carnival. |
The Events committee
After the war of 1870-71 and the fall of the second Empire, the festivals of the carnival were going to be endowed with a new structure. A young civil servant of the prefecture, Andriot Saetone, took the initiative to create an Events committee " to restore in the carnival his vigour of former days ". In fact, it was a question of reassuring and of getting back the winter holiday clientele, worried since the events of the Municipality and which abandoned Nice by fear of "red", to prefer it San Remo on the Italian Riviera which had a quite new casino. So in 1873, an organizing Committee of the carnival, consisted of rich French and foreign winter holiday-makers as well as members of the bourgeoisie of Nice, established a valuable distribution on the occasion of a first parade of floats, cavalcades, masquerades. The festivities were so placed under the sign of charity fairs and charity, to appeal to the generosity and to the participation of the winter holiday-makers in the good tradition of victorian time.
Nice became one of the most famous urban carnivals of the Planet, in Rio's side, New Orleans, Quebec, Viareggio, which appear so from the end of the XIX-th century and come to transform the atmosphere of these carnivals, "more Venetian" in the XVIII-th century and confined in masked balls or Veglioni in the Italian theatres.
The crowned heads, the " Gentry ", hurried up in the loggias of the Carnival of Nice, even participated as the Prince of Wales, in the battles of flowers, on the Promenade des Anglais, in their flowery " breaks ", and between two battles of confettis of plaster (or of paper), took time to appreciate the quality of the grotesque parade, on Saleya Court, then later, place Masséna.
The writer Stephen Liegeard was not going to delay creating the term of "Côte d'Azur", the centenarian in 1987-88, the expression of which we celebrated become the definitive naming of our region.
Numerous initiatives are to put in the asset of the successive events committees:
Creation of battles of flowers on the Promenade des Anglais in 1876, first trains of pleasure on the line Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée in 1877, the floats of the music, the first float of Her Majesty Carnival in 1882, the palace for Carnival from 1890, among which those, set up between 1904 and 1908 in the purest style of the Art nouveau, the official song of the carnival from 1905, of magnificent decorations for electric illuminations from 1921, Madam Carnival in 1893, and her son Carnavalon in the thirties, the participation of numerous foreign delegations, which contribute to make some grotesque parade of Nice one of the most important of the world by the number of models, subjects, big heads, floats in pasteboard. In the Beautiful Time, the carnival of Nice was the most famous of the world, heightened by the presence of crowned or with prestigious personalities such as the prince of Wales or the emperor of Brazil (in 1888) on the eve of his dismissal. |
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