After I had arrived and found my "maison d'hote", a wonderful mansion from the 18th century (http://www.legreillon.com), I went to have a look at the festival site. But before I was able to reach the theatre de fourvière I had to climb 550 steps to reach the hill where the concert took place. (Lyon is a beautiful city, with a very nice old town, lots of little restaurants and cafés and -most of all- friendly people. I should have booked more than one night. The only obstacle is that some parts of the city are on hills and to be able to get there you have to walk up the stairs --or take the funiculaire
When I arrived at the Roman theatre, they were already preparing for that evening's concert. At the half-circled part in front of the stage they had put chairs, but later I discovered, that those were only for V.I.P's...They were preparing the soundcheck and I spotted Leanne Ungar. But as I wanted to go to a restaurant in the old town to eat something before the concert, I didn't have the time to witness the actual soundcheck. (Maybe someone else had and can report on it). I was back at the entrance of the theatre at 7.30p.m., there were already quite a lot of people queuing. But because I knew that the best seats had been reserved, there was actually no need to queue hours before....
So when they opened at 8pm I got a wonderful place to sit on the stoney stairs the in the middle of the theatre with a very good view to the stage. (And this for only 51.80 EUR whereas in Montreux I would have paid 220 EUR ... 
The concert itself started punctually at 9.30 pm as it was already getting dark. This was wonderful, so one could fully enjoy the light show. Leonard got the first of uncountable standing ovations and actually I didn't understand his first words as the crowd was cheering and cheering. He then introduced his first song in French, as he would later do several times in the first part of the set. It was wonderful to hear him speak French. He didn't tell about having been a kid with a crazy dream though.
The sound was impeccable and during Bird on a Wire, there was a single bird flying over the amphitheatre. Just wonderful. I particularly liked the first set, The Future ( with the white man and the white girls dancing) , In my secret life, Hey that's no way to say goodbye and Anthem were the highlights for me. (IThe studio version of Anthem never was one of my preferred songs but Leonard and his band did it so beautifully yesterday evening that I teared up, it was just magic.)
In the second set, there were (as far as I can remember) no introductions to the songs in French. When he got into Tower of Song someone was yelling something to him and he said: "Speak up!" and at the end he said to the angels: Don't ever stop, we have nowhere to go, nous ne sommes pas pressés...
Before the encores, Leonard came running on to the stage. He had so much energy and he really seems to enjoy himself on stage. Before the concert, they had distributed "coussins" (I don't know the word in English, sorry) to sit on, as otherwise sitting on the stoney stairs of the theatre for 3 hours would have been a little bit difficult. So after the first pair of encores people were throwing their coussins like frisbees in direction of the stage, some of them actually landed on stage and the whole situation seemed to surprise especially Leonard, Sharon and the Webb sisters, they had a good laugh about it, one of the Webb sisters took her camera and made a picture and Leonard took his hat as he wanted to throw it into the public as well. I'm your man and If it be your will were the highlights in the second set and the encores for me. At 00.35 a.m. a wonderful concert had come to its end it passed so quickly (especially the second part when they were literally performing song after song without intervals) , too quickly, it seemed as they would have performed only for an hour.
It has been a wonderful experience, Leonard in top form with his sublime band (1000 thumbs up especially for Javier Mas!!!!), cristal-clear sound, the beautiful setting and and very nice French people sitting beside me (Malheureusement, j'ai oublié vos noms, je ne suis pas très fort en me souvenir des noms si je les entends seulement une fois...Mais c'était très sympa parler avec vous...et faire des blagues sur le concert tant "pathétique"). One lady in front of us said after the first part that Leonard seemed very pathetic to her and we had a good laugh about that replying that the second set would be even more pathetic
Now I can't wait for the concert in Lörrach...
