Friday, August 21, 2009

Opera Garnier, 2009

Tuesday, after packing up, cleaning, refitting and refueling the camper, we took the Metro into town one more time, walked the old Opera district, had lunch at Leon's (where we obtained a third Eau de Paris carafe), visited Galeries Lafayette and Printemps, then had coffee with a view of the Opera. We drove off that evening, getting as far as Abbeville.


The old Paris Opera, Palace Garnier

Meyerbeer, Wagner's rival in the 1840s; there are no busts nor statues of Wagner on the building (although just about everybody else in musical history is there); it was here, roughly here, well, in Paris, in the early 1860s, that a riot ended the first performance of the Paris version of Tannhauser; in 1979, Vicki and I had lunch at the nearby Cafe Wagner, now long-gone; nowadays you'd pretty much have to be a music historian to know who Meyerbeer was....
 
Cafe-table view of the Opera

Cafe de la Paix
 
Interior of the Opera district Galeries Lafayette
 
Galeries Lafayette rotunda

Organ grinder's orange cat

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