with utopia. Add an inexhaustible supply of passion. Make a few informed suggestions. Then, and only then, talk politics.

It sounds like a recipe for artistic disaster, but when you marry it to the sun and locale of southern France, it has a habit of turning into paradise. That, at least, is the experience of most visitors to the Aix-en-Provence festival these past few summers. You have the perfect weather, the gastronomie, the suitably distressed 18th-century architecture and a bronzed landscape as fit for creativity as it is for relaxation. All that's needed on top is the vision, patience and political will to harness energy — the energy of performing artists.