Pavillons de Bercy: Musee des Artes Forains

The Museum of Fairground Arts appears in Midnight in Paris: the rented venue of a Scott and Zelda party, where Gil (re-) encounters Adriana (here). It's a real place and not just a movie set: three large halls of restored circus, fun-fair, and fairground art and mobiles, mostly belle epoque, collected and presented by one Jean Paul Favand, and in its present location, in the Pavillons of Bercy, since 1996. At the time depicted in the movie it did not exist, of course, and Bercy, once the largest wine market in France, and probably the world, was in the last stages of its decline. (Something about the growing preference for "estate-bottled," changes in transportation, wars, taxes, etc.). The museum is housed in three large former wine warehouses--several more warehouses are said to contain spares, items in restoration, and so forth. In whole or part, it can be rented for assorted events--yes, weddings--but it also conducts limited tours. En francais, seulement. Through Rebecca's perseverance, again, we scored tickets. Granted, this is not one of the must-see venues of Paris, but it is a wonderful respite from all the seriousness and much fun for both kids and adults. See the museum website for much more. And in English, too.

In the Venice hall

Us, there

The tour is in French only, but the non-Francophones can read along
in the multi-page hand-out in the language of their choice; half our
group of four are Francophones; apparently the guide's lengthy narration
is replete with puns and humor...

Among the many working carousels

Our tour group in another hall

The place is more than replete with the relevant artifacts

Famous elephant-toting hot air balloon

More artifacts

More animatronics; sort of

Our guide explaining the first of several skee ball-powered race
tracks; from what I could tell and hear, she was very good

Penelope (purple jacket) came in second

Us all, there

Unicorn and piano

Fairground organ 

Many re-creations of iconic Parisian scenes

Toulouse-Lautrec painting

Victor Hugo writing

One of the halls

Between the halls, in what remains of the old wine warehouse district;
the tracks would go all the way to Burgundy, the Rhone, and Provence;
Bercy is right on the river, too, in the 12th, so there was that mode of
transportation before railroads

Whimsy everywhere

Lots of opportunities for shots like this

The piece de resistance for us was the skee ball-powered
derby of the cafe waiters

Based on a real annual event in Montmartre; 8kms without spilling

Yet another carousel

Peeking into another hall

The very famous velo-powered merry-go-round

Enjoyed more than once by our party

Now departing the much gentrified and attractive Bercy; great visit!

Opera Garnier

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.

Full frontal, gleaming

Closer upper (other peoples' pix); the sculpture all around the
building, featuring the great composers (most of whom are
nowadays somewhat obscure) is stunning

Monument to Garnier

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"

Musical art-themed sculpture all around

Monuments everywhere to now nearly forgotten
composers

The grand staircase

The ceiling above it

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... 

Not sure stilettoes really go with the toga

Famous  French composer 

Now in the great hall itself

Chagall's plafond ; on the ceiling; analogous to Pei's Pyramide at the Louvre

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 

The stage and backdrop for the ballet going into production...Giselle...
more in a later post

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

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

The music library is immense; this is one hall of it;

there are two; 350 years of productions, give or take

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

And now we are in the grand reception hall, the public entry,
and to which the gents would retreat between acts; Versailles
would blush

Wider view

Parthian shot...unforgettable place