As many times as we have visited Paris, we have never toured the Palais Garnier. I've read about it, walked past it, gazed upon it, studied its exterior. I tried to do the tour last year but gave up when I learned the great hall would not be open for tours that day, due to rehearsals. What's a tour of an opera house if you can't see the house? This year we elected to try again, and Rebecca, visiting briefly, was set the task of finding a date when there were no performances nor rehearsals. So, on May 28th, after visits to the Marche Aligre, the BHV, the gluten-free boulangerie/patisserie Copains, we arrived for the scheduled tour, only to be told we might not be able to enter the great hall, as consultations about lighting for a production were underway. It all turned out fine...just part of the usual French suspense and dramatic flourish, I suspect. The tour was in English (sort of), a fairly large group, and covered most of the place except for the stage itself, orchestra pit, main floor seating, etc. The Opera Garnier was a child of Napoleon III (as is much of Paris as we know it), and it opened in the mid-1870s, not long after he had been sent packing by the Prussians. He never saw the place. But it remains fixed in most imaginations as the Paris Opera. (More anon). The style is neo-eclectic-revival. The house is Italian in style, a main floor and balcony, and then four or five tiers of private boxes that ring the entire hall. It is hard to imagine anything more opulent, inside and out. The architect was Charles Garnier, for whom it is aptly named. It's in the 9th, aptly right by the main Printemps and the Galeries Lafayette. We've seen the opera's roof many times from the roof of the Galeries Lafayette Cupola building. And now we were there. Thank you, Rebecca.
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| Full frontal, gleaming |
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| Closer upper (other peoples' pix); the sculpture all around the building, featuring the great composers (most of whom are nowadays somewhat obscure) is stunning |
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| Monument to Garnier |
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| Staircases and such everywhere; the point of grand opera, it has been said, was to be seen; the whole point of "grand" opera, Wagner wrote, was "merely an excuse for social gathering" |
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| Musical art-themed sculpture all around |
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| Monuments everywhere to now nearly forgotten composers |
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| The grand staircase |
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| The ceiling above it |
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| The staircase is a magnet for influencers; it always amazes me how deferential (some) people are, waiting patiently for all the right poses to be struck... |
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| Not sure stilettoes really go with the toga |
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| Famous French composer |
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| Now in the great hall itself |
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| Chagall's plafond ; on the ceiling; analogous to Pei's Pyramide at the Louvre |
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| Apart from the floors, hardly a square centimeter of the Garnier is not adorned in some fashion or other...sort of like a Vasari painting |
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| The stage and backdrop for the ballet going into production...Giselle... more in a later post |
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| Now entering the library/museum sections of the great building; Wagner does not adorn any of the exterior or interior spaces dedicated to the great composers, but there is a large bust of him here, no doubt relatively recent; it's a long story, but it will suffice to say that, when the Garnier was built and opened, he was still publicly gloating over France's humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War; he had little reason to love France; nor vice versa |
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| The Garnier is now devoted mostly to ballet, the big opera productions occurring, since 1989, at the Opera Bastille, across town; in the 17th and 18th centuries the Opera moved around, but in the 19th, it settled at the Theatre Le Peletier (now gone), where its most famous and infamous productions occurred; the term "Grand Opera" derives from this time and place |
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The music library is immense; this is one hall of it; there are two; 350 years of productions, give or take |
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| In the museum section, there is a copy of the original great hall ceiling, later replaced by the Chagall; far more fitting, in every way, if you ask me |
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| And now we are in the grand reception hall, the public entry, and to which the gents would retreat between acts; Versailles would blush |
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| Wider view |
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| Parthian shot...unforgettable place |
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