Les Avants is a
winter resort in the
Vaud Alps. The village was developed as a ski resort in the 19th century by the Dufour family. They constructed the ski slopes and built a hotel, Grand Hotel des Avants, to accommodate visitors. In 1872, an
Anglican chapel was built in the grounds of the hotel for the benefit of English visitors. The village hosted
the first Ice Hockey European Championship, in 1910 and gives its name to the
Chemin de fer Les Avants – Sonloup. Opened in 1901 as the first stage of the
Montreux–Lenk im Simmental line, it connects Montreux to Les Avants and Sonloup, to the northwest. The hotel closed after the
Second World War and has since served as a school, currently Le Châtelard international boarding school.
Ernest Hemingway stayed at the resort in the 1920s, and recalls the village in his memoir,
A Moveable Feast.
Notable residents The village was home to the opera singer
Dame Joan Sutherland and her husband, the conductor
Richard Bonynge, who lived at the Chalet Monet. Sutherland's home was found for her by
Noël Coward, a long-time friend and fellow resident of Les Avants. Coward had bought his own home, further down the mountain from Chalet Monet, in August 1959. Having toyed with the idea of calling the house Shilly Chalet, Coward adopted the local rendition of his own name,
Chalet Covar. After Coward's death at
Firefly, their other home in
Jamaica, in 1973, his partner
Graham Payn lived at the chalet until his own death in 2005. ==References==