Les Avants (

Montreux Montreux (, , ; frp, Montrolx) is a Swiss municipality and town on the shoreline of Lake Geneva at the foot of the Alps. It belongs to the district of Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland, and has a population of approximat ...

) is a village in the canton of

Vaud Vaud ( ; french: (Canton de) Vaud, ; german: (Kanton) Waadt, or ), more formally the canton of Vaud, is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of ten districts and its capital city is Lausanne. Its coat of arms b ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. It is located in the municipality of

, in the east of the canton, in the district of Riviera-Pays-d’Enhaut. It lies north-east of the town of Montreux and east of

Lausanne , neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR-74), ...

History and description

Les Avants is a

winter resort A ski resort is a resort developed for skiing, snowboarding, and other winter sports. In Europe, most ski resorts are towns or villages in or adjacent to a ski area – a mountainous area with pistes (ski trails) and a ski lift system. In Nor ...

in the

Vaud Alps , topo_map= Swiss Federal Office of Topography swisstopo , photo=Diablerets.jpg , photo_caption=View from the Sommet des Diablerets to the northeast to the Oldenhorn. , country= Switzerland , subdivision1_type=Cantons , subdivision1= , pare ...

. The village was developed as a ski resort in the 19th century by the Dufour family. They constructed the ski slopes and built a hotel, Grand Hotel des Avants, to accommodate visitors. In 1872, an

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...

chapel was built in the grounds of the hotel for the benefit of English visitors. The village hosted

the first The First may refer to: * ''The First'' (album), the first Japanese studio album by South Korean boy group Shinee * ''The First'' (musical), a musical with a book by critic Joel Siegel * The First (TV channel), an American conservative opinion ne ...

Ice Hockey European Championship The Ice Hockey European Championship was an annual ice hockey tournament for European countries associated with the International Ice Hockey Federation. A total of 66 European Champions were crowned in between the years 1910 and 1991. Independe ...

, in 1910 and gives its name to the Chemin de fer Les Avants – Sonloup. Opened in 1901 as the first stage of the

Montreux-Oberland Bernois The Montreux Oberland Bernois Railway (french: link=no, Chemin de fer Montreux Oberland Bernois, german: link=no, Montreux Berner Oberland Bahn, abbreviated MOB), is an electrified railway line that operates in southwest Switzerland. It is one o ...

, it connects Montreux to Les Avants and Sonloup, to the northwest. The hotel closed after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and has since served as a school, currently Le Châtelard international boarding school.

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...

stayed at the resort in the 1920s, and recalls the village in his memoir, ''

A Moveable Feast ''A Moveable Feast'' is a 1964 memoir '' belles-lettres'' by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling expat journalist and writer in Paris during the 1920s. It was published posthumously. The book details Hemingway's firs ...

''.

Notable residents

The village was home to the opera singer

Dame Joan Sutherland Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, (7 November 1926 – 10 October 2010) was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano known for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s. She possess ...

and her husband, the conductor

Richard Bonynge Richard Alan Bonynge ( ) (born 29 September 1930) is an Australian conductor and pianist. He is the widower of Australian dramatic coloratura soprano Dame Joan Sutherland. Bonynge conducted virtually all of Sutherland's operatic performances ...

, who lived at the Chalet Monet. Sutherland’s home was found for her by

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...

, a long-time friend and fellow resident of Les Avants. Coward had bought his own home, further down the mountain from Chalet Monet, in August 1959. Having toyed with the idea of calling the house Shilly Chalet, Coward adopted the local rendition of his own name, Chalet Covar. After Coward’s death at

Firefly The Lampyridae are a family of elateroid beetles with more than 2,000 described species, many of which are light-emitting. They are soft-bodied beetles commonly called fireflies, lightning bugs, or glowworms for their conspicuous production ...

, their other home in

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

, in 1973, his partner

Graham Payn Graham Payn (25 April 1918 – 4 November 2005) was a South African-born English actor and singer, also known for being the life partner of the playwright Noël Coward. Beginning as a boy soprano, Payn later made a career as a singer and ac ...

lived at the chalet until his own death in 2005.

References

Sources

* {{authority control Villages in Switzerland Villages in the canton of Vaud