Day: 31 July 2026

The Monte-Carlo Summer Festival is entering the final stretch of its 2026 run, with Vanessa Paradis, LP, Lisa Stansfield and a closing night from Laura Pausini still to come over the coming fortnight at the Salle des Étoiles and the Opéra Garnier.

Now in its 20th edition, the festival, curated by the Société des Bains de Mer’s group artistic director Alfonso Ciulla, has run since early July across the two venues and has already brought a string of major names to the Principality this summer, among them Jon Batiste, Jason Derulo, Aya Nakamura, Juanes and John Legend.

The final concerts

Vanessa Paradis takes the stage at the Opéra Garnier on Friday 31st July, presenting an album of pop and seventies soul co-written with Étienne Daho and Jean-Louis Piérot. The American singer-songwriter LP, known for her worldwide hit ‘Lost on You’, follows at the Salle des Étoiles on 1st August, before the British soul singer Lisa Stansfield performs there on 11th August. The festival then closes on 15th August with the Italian pop star Laura Pausini, returning to a Salle des Étoiles stage she has played many times before.

Running alongside those dates is ‘Soul! (where legends come back)’, an in-house production by the Sporting Monte-Carlo celebrating the rock’n’roll of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, which continues at the Salle des Étoiles from 2nd to 9th August after its first performances at the end of July.

Two decades of the festival

The 2026 programme leans heavily on soul and R&B, threaded through with pop, rock and French chanson, and marks two decades since the festival began in 2006. As in previous years, each dinner-show evening at the Salle des Étoiles opens with a set from the Ultramarine Girls Band, the all-female group whose repertoire runs to more than 150 pop, rock and Latin numbers.

Tickets

Tickets for the Opéra Garnier concerts are priced at €120, while the dinner shows at the Salle des Étoiles range from €260 for ‘Soul!’ to €420 for the international headliners. Reservations are handled by the Société des Bains de Mer, at montecarlosbm.com or by telephone.

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Photo of Soul!, credit: Philip Ducap

The skies above Antibes and Juan-les-Pins will once again be transformed into a spectacle of light and music this August as the Pyromelodic Festival returns with four free fireworks displays along the Riviera coastline.

A long-standing highlight of the Côte d’Azur summer calendar, the festival combines synchronised fireworks with carefully choreographed musical soundtracks, drawing thousands of spectators to the beaches and waterfront each year. Three of the displays will take place over the Bay of Juan-les-Pins before a grand finale in Antibes celebrating the city’s Liberation commemorations.

Pyromelodic Festival programme in Antibes and Juan-les-Pins

This year’s festival opens on Thursday 6th August, with further displays on Thursday 13th August and Thursday 20th August, all beginning at 10pm over the Bay of Juan-les-Pins.

The final evening will take place on Monday 24th August at 10pm, when fireworks will be launched along the Route du Bord de Mer between Fort Carré and the beaches of La Brague as part of Antibes’ annual Liberation Day commemorations.

What to expect at the Antibes Pyromelodic Festival

Rather than a traditional fireworks display, the Pyromelodic Festival is designed as an immersive sound-and-light performance, with each sequence carefully synchronised to music. The free event has become one of the French Riviera’s signature summer attractions, offering visitors an opportunity to enjoy spectacular evenings by the sea without the need for tickets.

The best viewing points are along the seafront in Juan-les-Pins for the first three evenings, while spectators attending the final display on 24th August are encouraged to watch from the Route du Bord de Mer between Fort Carré and the beaches of La Brague.

Road closures and parking restrictions during the fireworks

Visitors should allow extra time to reach the venue, as traffic and parking restrictions will be in force on each fireworks evening. Roads within the event perimeter in Juan-les-Pins will be closed to vehicles from 4pm until midnight to ensure public safety, with similar restrictions expected around the Antibes finale.

Monaco Life is produced by qualified, multi-media journalists writing original content. See more in our free newsletter, follow our Podcasts on Spotify, and check us out on  Facebook,  Instagram,  LinkedIn and Tik Tok. 

Photo by Monaco Life

For many high-functioning professionals, managing a demanding lifestyle is a daily exercise in precision. As interest in ‘performance medicine’ grows, a trend is emerging among some successful professionals: travel to clinics in the Swiss Alps for a procedure known as Inuspheresis.

We live in an era where life expectancy has increased, yet many report persistent, non-specific health issues—such as chronic fatigue, brain fog, and systemic inflammation—that often defy a clear diagnosis.

Clinical observers have begun to look beyond simple lifestyle adjustments to investigate how biological factors contribute to these conditions. “Environmental toxins, immune overload, and the relentless pressures of modern life are placing a cumulative strain on the body that it can no longer manage on its own,” explains Felix Strobl, Business Development Manager at Ayus, a centre specialising in environmental medicine and Inuspheresis, in an interview with Monaco Life. “What we have lacked is a structured medical response—a way to move past treating individual symptoms and instead confront the broader, holistic nature of the problem.”

The clinical experience 

At its core, Inuspheresis—a high-tech procedure known as double-filtration plasmapheresis (DFPP)—is designed to cleanse the blood plasma. During a session of approximately two hours, blood is gently drawn from the patient and passed through a sophisticated filtration system that separates the plasma from the blood cells.

This plasma then travels through a secondary filter, tailored to the patient’s specific profile to capture a broad spectrum of environmental toxins, inflammatory markers, and accumulated waste products. Once this filtration is complete, the purified plasma is rejoined with the blood cells and safely returned to the patient.

While double-filtration plasmapheresis is an established medical procedure used in hospitals to treat severe autoimmune conditions and specific lipid disorders, its application as a ‘biological tune-up’ for otherwise healthy individuals is considered an elective, non-standard practice.

Scientific scrutiny: Is detoxification real? 

While proponents highlight the procedure’s ability to remove targeted markers, the scientific rationale behind elective ‘detoxification’ remains a subject of debate. Dr. Robin Mesnage, Scientific Director at Buchinger Wilhelmi Clinic, urges caution.

“I have heard about this approach, but I remain cautious about the ‘detoxification’ rationale,” says Dr. Mesnage. “They advocate that they can remove harmful substances, but how can they differentiate between harmful and healthy elements in blood?”

He points out that biology rarely draws a clear line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ molecules. “Antibodies, inflammatory mediators, lipoproteins, and many other circulating factors have different physiological functions. It really depends on context, even when they are associated with disease.”

A significant challenge, according to Dr. Mesnage, is that “disease-associated molecules do not carry a specific tag identifying them as harmful.” Because blood filtration techniques generally remove classes of molecules based on their physical properties rather than their specific role in a disease, he warns that “potentially beneficial and potentially harmful molecules may be removed together.”

Perspectives on efficacy 

Practitioners at centres specialising in Inuspheresis maintain that the procedure offers a data-driven approach to wellness, suggesting that analysing the ‘eluate’—the material captured by the filters—provides insights into a patient’s toxic load that can guide long-term health planning. Strobl says that the procedure is CE-marked and operates under strictly regulated Swissmedic-approved protocols.

He describes the patient experience as a lifting of ‘background noise’, adding: “It’s not just about blood tests; it’s about how you feel when you wake up. Patients often report that their energy returns and that chronic ‘brain fog’ finally lifts, allowing them to think clearly again.”

The human touch in a high-tech world 

The value of the procedure, according to its practitioners, extends beyond the technology itself. Strobl—who is also a tenor—argues that performance medicine must remain human-centric. His approach integrates vocal techniques and breathing exercises designed to stimulate the vagus nerve and regulate the nervous system.

“Technology is a fantastic tool,” he says, “but it works best when it is combined with the regulatory mechanisms we all carry within us.” By calming the body through these techniques before the filtration procedure, he believes the restorative benefits are amplified.

Insights from the WAIB Summit 

The concept recently took centre stage at the WAIB Summit 2026, where Felix Strobl presented alongside Dr. Irene Ching, focusing on the idea of “age resilience”. Their message was: true health is not about vanity, but about unburdening the body’s natural systems so they can function as they were designed to.

Monaco Life is produced by qualified, multi-media journalists writing original content. See more in our free newsletter, follow our Podcasts on Spotify, and check us out on  Facebook,  Instagram,  LinkedIn and Tik Tok. 

Main photo: Félix Strobl, Neuroscientist, Tenor, and Business Development Manager at Ayus, at the Big Bang Ki Festival / Photo credit: Offenblende-Andrej