The French national holiday of 14 July might be marked by parades and fly-pasts in Paris, but here on the Atlantic coast it’s the central date for Francofolies, the annual festival dedicated to French music. La Rochelle hosted its first Francofolies in 1985. Twenty-six years on, the festival remains the premier showcase for Francophone music. This year the bill took in David Guetta’s dance-floor cheesiness, Gotan Project's overhauled tango, actress Mélanie Laurent plugging her recent album and all points in between.

Who could argue that television isn’t a great medium for learning about art? In its pared-down, visually literate way it delivers what dull, theory-laden extrapolations often can’t (if only because artists don’t think that way when they make things, and we don’t think that way when we look at things). It can breathe renewed life and vigour into a subject we think we know well, and, as a medium for simplified, pocket-sized information, it can get straight to the heart of a matter. Perfect. Possibly. And so we come to The Impressionists: Painting and Revolution.

The battlefields of the First World War are frequented most by secondary school groups and military history enthusiasts. And by David Grindley: a man for whom the play Journey’s End is an obsession, and his direction of it award-winning. RC Sherriff's play follows a group of British officers preparing for battle in frontline trench warfare, and which places “ordinary men into extraordinary circumstances”. This month sees Grindley’s production returning to the West End.

I never thought I’d find myself saying that a French female vocalist reminded me of Howard Devoto. But there we are, what can you do? There’s just something in the way she sings the verses of “Hell be Damned and Look Out”: the pauses between words (“Let’s face it… you may only live… once”); the way the last note (word) of the line just kind of hangs there, emotionally ambiguous and philosophically inscrutable. But Florence Joelle also has the sensuous purr of a French Marilyn Monroe. So whichever way you look at it, you’ve got to sit up and take notice.

Sweetheart American mezzo Joyce DiDonato stayed firmly behind the proscenium arch for yesterday evening's Royal Opera performance of Massenet's Cendrillon - reviewed by theartsdesk on its opening night - but another Covent Garden regular, former ballerina and non-irritant presenter Deborah Bull, was soon schmoozing the crowds in Trafalgar Square, assembled to watch the fairytale unfold in real time beneath Nelson's Column. It was a big occasion for the long-deceased composer, who having enjoyed short-lived fame went into near eclipse except for Werther and Manon over the next century but last night supposedly had 50,000 pairs of eyes up and down the UK on one of his most delicate creations courtesy of the free BP Summer Big Screens.

It is all in black and white, and undoubtedly very beautiful. Delphine Seyrig, the flighty, baffled siren at its heart, is undoubtedly very beautiful. The setting, which could be Versailles or a château in the Loire (it was in fact filmed at palaces in Bavaria), is undoubtedly very beautiful. The 1950s society mannequins, men in black tie, women in Coco Chanel, who're mysteriously occupying a central European spa hotel are undoubtedly very beautiful. It was undoubtedly directed, in 1961, by the then more or less unknown Alain Resnais and scripted by the better-known Alain Robbe-Grillet (author of Le Voyeur, 1955, and La Jalousie, 1957). Beauty agreed, it must be admitted that Last Year in Marienbad also remains as impenetrable on its rerelease as it was 50 years ago.

It is all in black and white, and undoubtedly very beautiful. Delphine Seyrig, the flighty, baffled siren at its heart, is undoubtedly very beautiful. The setting, which could be Versailles or a château in the Loire (it was in fact filmed at palaces in Bavaria), is undoubtedly very beautiful. The 1950s society mannequins, men in black tie, women in Coco Chanel, who're mysteriously occupying a central European spa hotel are undoubtedly very beautiful. It was undoubtedly directed, in 1961, by the then more or less unknown Alain Resnais and scripted by the better-known Alain Robbe-Grillet (author of Le Voyeur, 1955, and La Jalousie, 1957). Beauty agreed, it must be admitted that Last Year in Marienbad also remains as impenetrable on its rerelease as it was 50 years ago.

After a heap of ashen revivals, it was time for the Royal Opera to take us to the ball in style. Which it does, for the most part. Of course, Massenet's "fairytale after Perrault" isn't Aida, Butterfly, Fidelio, Macbeth orTosca, all of which have deserved better from the house. Though spun out at less than heavenly length and, sometimes, so much per yard, it does have the composer's special brands of discreet charm and gentle humour, especially well served by two world-class voices out of the four leads.

French interpreters Nouvelle Vague have a seemingly unsustainable path. Reinterpreting Anglo songs of the post-punk and new wave eras in unlikely semi-easy-listening settings (bossa nova, reggae, country and bluegrass) would appear to bring diminishing returns. But on their last album, 2009’s 3, they went gently Gallic, covering “Ça plane pour moi”, originally by Belgium’s Plastic Bertrand. Fourth time out, it’s all Francophone.

While we are far from lacking in top early music ensembles in the UK, there’s no denying that the French have a special affinity for this repertoire. While The Academy of Ancient Music and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are virtuosic champions of the genre, if we were all stuck in a sinking hot air balloon I’d lose both before sacrificing Les Musiciens du Louvre, Les Talens Lyriques, Le Concert d'Astrée or Les Arts Florissants. So it was with anticipation that I made my way to the Barbican last night to hear the UK debut of Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, the newest French orchestra on the block.

Mehdi Zannad isn’t a familiar name, but he’s issued a raft of albums as Fugu and has been championed by Stereolab. His profile in Japan is good, and he’s composed soundtracks in his native France. Fugue, the first album released under his own name, is co-produced by Tahiti 80’s Xavier Boyer. "Fugue" translates as "break away" – which he has from the Fugu guise. He’s also broken away from English. Fugue is Zannad's first French-language album. Language, though, is no barrier to basking in this summery pop.