reference:
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/sincities/paris.html

http://www.paris.fr/portail/Culture/Portal.lut?page_id=5854&...

Il s'agit des années 1919 - 1929.

Generally left in FR, italicised, etc.

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Note added at 8 mins (2009-01-10 16:09:28 GMT)
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Here the author annotates it saying it is roughly equivalent to the 'jazz age', but 'roughly' is the key word.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/853289

Morrill Cody (April 10, 1901 - November 23, 1987) was an American diplomat, literary editor, and author. Cody served with the United States Foreign Service for more than two decades and was a former deputy director of the United States Information Agency from 1961 to 1963 under Edward R. Murrow. From 1965 to 1976 he managed the Paris bureau of Radio Free Europe.

The author of several books, he edited the 1937 book "This Must be the Place; Memoirs of Montparnasse" by James "Jimmie" Charters, the highly popular barman at the Dingo Bar in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris during the Années Folles (the Crazy Years) in the 1920s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrill_Cody

Kiki of Montparnasse
Zabriskie Gallery exhibits works by and of Kiki from April 9 to May 24, 2002. Famous during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s as an artist, model, cabaret singer, and personality, Kiki - born Alice Prin (1901-1953) - was the symbol of bohemian and creative Paris during the annees folles, when the artworld switched banks, with Montparnasse supplanting Montmartre as the epicenter.
http://www.zabriskiegallery.com/exhibition.php?ex=53&page=14...

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Note added at 6 hrs (2009-01-10 22:09:08 GMT)
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"I couldn't care less for convention, taste and established style, if there is any of this in my paintings it will be found out later. Right now, I'm going to do some living." Fernand Léger, 1924


As Paris emerged from the ashes of the Great War into a new decade, in the wake of deprivation, decadence flourished and a wave of hedonism swept through the city. Paris became the centre of modernity and creativity in the heyday before the worldwide depressions brought on by the Wall Street crash of 1929. With economic prosperity came easier travel and trade. The city of light drew people like a magnet in search of the intellectual, artistic and sexual freedom only the French capital could offer. Movies and radio proliferated modernity to the masses; dancing to a jazz soundtrack, flappers hemlines flicked rhythmically in the nightclubs and dancehalls of Pigalle and Montparnasse; Josephine Baker exuded exotic eroticism; Coco Chanel's luxe lifestyle perfumed the air; Charles Lindbergh epitomised speed and international fame flying solo across the Atlantic, rewarded with the Legion d'honneur. Consumerism flourished and champagne and ideas flowed from the city to the beaches as cultural practices shifted with the seasons and the fashions as people took refuge from the urban intensity of the capital. This was the excitement of Les Années Folles; Paris in the Twenties.

Against this tableau vivant a host of artists from across wider Europe underlined the fact that France, beneath her glittering veneer, was mourning the losses that war brings and welcoming its refugees. We confront a simultaneity of modernist styles ranging from the purity or machine aesthetic of Fernand Léger's advertising motif inspired paintings to the neoclassical and monumental figures portrayed by those artists that pre-war had been cubists; Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. The first surrealist manifesto was also issued in this diverse and exciting period. Embracing the enigmatic and surrendering themselves to "pure psychic automatism" and Freud's work with free association, dream analysis and the hidden unconscious, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy and Rene Magritte produced images of mystery, dreams and nightmares. As Walter Benjamin wrote of the Surrealists in 1929: "At the centre of this world of things stands the most dreamed-of of their objects, the city of Paris itself."
Exhibition Detail
Group Show
Les Années Folles: Paris in the Twenties
Helly Nahmad Gallery
2 Cork Street
London W1S 3LB
United Kingdom

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Note added at 6 hrs (2009-01-10 22:17:25 GMT)
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And here is a book on the 'années folles' which dates it as between 1918 and 1939 - somewhat longer than the 1920s!
http://books.google.com/books?id=JrYuC9-SqXwC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA...

Samedi 10 janvier 2009 19h00 (1/2) - 20h15 (2/2)
Giacomo Puccini - La Rondine
http://www.arte.tv/fr/Giacomo-Puccini---La-Rondine/2365438,C...
The asker seems to be inquiring about the above opera, having quoted, word for word, Arte TV's programme for this evening (incidentally, a great pleasure which I hope you are all sharing at this very moment…)
As for the question, for which we have any number of obviously correct responses… What was it…? Oh, yes : "What was the colour of Henry IV's white horse"… Everybody wins!!!

Is the Pope Catholic? retorts my friend Norbert when I ask if he’d like a beer. A beer and rhetoric lover, he shares both attributes with John, who then actually asks if the Pope is Catholic - staying true to the saying that the best way to answer a stupid question is with another stupid question.

The rhetorical question was already a popular stylistic device at the time of Roman orator Cicero’s Catiline Orations. We serve up a platitude in the form of a question and in doing so embellish phrases concerning everyday matters. Today such expressions often take a trip into nature. Does a one-legged duck swim in circles? Something else John might legitimately ask.

The Holy Father, in contrast - and even he isn’t safe from stupid questions – perhaps prefers the Italian variety: di che colore era il cavallo bianco di Napoleone? (what colour was Napoleon’s white horse?). Incidentally, this white horse is sighted in all Mediterranean countries, but changes riders across language boundaries: in France, the question concerns Henry IV's white horse: de quelle couleur est le cheval blanc de Henri Quatre?, whilst it's Saint James who rides through Spain: ¿de qué color es el caballo blanco de Santiago?



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Note added at 18 hrs (2009-01-11 10:11:25 GMT)
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"La Rondine” comes to the Roxy through the Met's Live in HD series
12.23.08
http://www.potsdam.edu/newsandevents/1208_roxy.cfm

The Metropolitan Opera’s “The Met: Live in HD” series will continue at the Potsdam Roxy Theater with the presentation of “La Rondine,” Giacomo Puccini’s unique and remarkably modern work about one failed and one successful romance. The live broadcast will take place Saturday, Jan. 10, at 1 p.m., with an encore showing on Sunday, Feb. 1, at 1 p.m.

“La Rondine” (The Swallow) is an opera in three acts to an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, based on a libretto by Alfred Maria Willner and Heinz Reichert. It was first performed at the Grand Théâtre de Monte Carlo (or the Théâtre du Casino) in Monte Carlo on March 27, 1917*. The production returns to the Met this season for the first time since 1936.

Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna provide the star power to deliver this ravishing romance from the world’s most popular opera composer. Gheorghiu plays the kept woman who gambles on true love, and Alagna is the man who makes her question the cost of her glittering existence. Nicolas Joël directs the new production of this gorgeously melodic look at love.

Unlike Puccini’s previous successful operas, “La Rondine” is an original story that is not based on a well-known novel or drama. It tells of a Parisian woman, Magda, who leaves her cushy-but-compromised life for an attempt at romantic love with an idealistic and naïve young man. She runs away with him to the south of France, only to break off the relationship and return to her previous life at the end of the opera.

This failed romance is contrasted with the story of another couple, a considerably more comic pair of lovers who keep the spice in their relationship by maintaining an ironic role-play scenario. In this opera, it seems, deceptive and mercenary relationships last longer than those that appear to be based on “true” love.

Paris and the French Riviera of the 1920s are brought to life in stunning art-deco sets designed by Ezio Frigerio, with costumes by Franca Squarciapino and lighting designed by Duane Schuler. Marco Armiliato conducts the opera, which is 2 hours and 15 minutes long with one intermission.
*Puccini, himself, is said to have been present, for the last time, for that historic recital of his opera...EAL


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Note added at 18 hrs (2009-01-11 10:45:46 GMT)
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"Paris and the French Riviera of the 1920s are brought to life in stunning art-deco sets designed by Ezio Frigerio, with costumes by Franca Squarciapino..."

The above is the exact translation of the asker's actual question:

"Please, which historical period is meant here?"; as it is taken from the English version of the review cited in French:
"Une envoûtante histoire d'amour signée Puccini, transposée dans le Paris des années folles. Un spectacle exceptionnel, avec le couple star de l'opéra - Angela Gheorghiu et Roberto Alagna -, en direct du prestigieux Metropolitan Opera de New York."

As to the moot question, which everyone has abundantly paraphrased: "...le Paris des années folles.", almost any of the expressions expressions will do...neither being a more exact turn of the phrase than another...