The New Year’s Eve concert on the Champs Élysées has been cancelled for security reasons. Paris was supposed to host its usual spectacle. A free open-air concert at the Arc de Triomphe, video projections on the monument and the midnight festivities that once drew close to a million people. Instead, the concert has been scrapped. It will be replaced on national television with a prerecorded concert filmed weeks ago with a handpicked crowd to mimic a celebration Paris no longer believes it can safely host. A capital once famed for its public life now performs it under studio conditions.

It marks the collapse of what used to be one of the simplest pleasures of Parisian life. For decades families and friends would spill out onto the streets on New Year’s Eve. Families, couples carrying a bott

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