A Paris Symphony

In a three-dimensional tale of intricately interwoven fantasy and historical facts, retired stockbroker and would-be composer Jacob Hippolyte Rodrigues takes the reader on a magical tour of the salons of nineteenth-century Paris, the undisputed cultural capital of Europe. Through his eyes we witness the birth, growth, and decline of a typical French art form, the Grand Opera, and delve into the creative processes behind Bizet’s Carmen and Berlioz’s Les Troyens.



SHLOMO HED was born in Berlin in 1932. In 1938 his family escaped from Germany to Belgium, where the war finally caught up with them and where the author lived in hiding during the Nazi occupation. Shlomo Hed immigrated to Israel in 1948 and was a senior program producer in the music department of Israel’s Broadcasting Authority for over thirty-five years. He wrote the first opera guide in Hebrew and, in cooperation with Ada Brodsky, a compilation of musical anecdotes.