|
 Claire Oppert, a concert cellist trained at the Moscow Conservatory,
visits the facility on Fridays to play for its residents - many of
whom are struggling with physical pain as well as coming to terms
with incurable illness.
"I'm in permanent pain," said Micheline Leroux, a cancer patient at
the care centre in southwest Paris, one of the biggest of its kind
in Europe.
"But I find that music helps a little to escape the pain," said
Leroux quietly, after listening to a stirring rendition of
Albinoni's Adagio, a Baroque classic.
"You pay attention, and if it's a piece you know, you anticipate
each coming note," she said.
Besides the weekly recitals, Oppert, 55, has made it her mission to
demonstrate the therapeutic effects of music by taking part in
medical studies on the subject.
Staff at the care home are in no doubt.
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 "After Claire leaves, we find
the patients in a calmer state, sometimes moved,
sometimes happy," said carer Margarita Saldana.
"There can be tears or moments of joy."
Oppert has been playing to end-of-life patients
for almost a decade since she first visited a
nursing home with her cello.
"In palliative care there's sometimes still
pain, in spite of the morphine and drugs," she
said. "Music really does have a calming effect
on that residual pain."
(Reporting by Yiming Woo, editing by Estelle
Shirbon)
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