OPÉRA GARNIER

Description

Essentials about the Opéra Garnier in brief

Opera and ballet lovers get their money’s worth in Paris. The Opéra Garnier is not only one of the most beautiful, but also one of the most important opera houses in Europe. It is the older of the two Parisian opera houses under the state institution Opéra National de Paris (the younger is the Opéra Bastille, which only opened in 1989). Since the latter’s opening, the Opéra Garnier has been used mainly for ballet performances by the in-house ballet company Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, but still performs classical operas as well. Until the inauguration of the Opéra Bastille, the Opéra Garnier was the largest theater building in the world with its more than 11,000 square meters of floor space (although the Vienna State Opera and Milan’s Teatro alla Scala have more seats). In architectural history, it is considered a model example of theater construction and was often the model for later theater buildings.

The architecture of the Opéra Garnier

The opera was built between 1860 and 1875 under the master builder and architect Charles Garnier, commissioned by Napoleon III. Garnier opted for an exterior design of the building that would clearly indicate its internal function, and revisited the traditional peep-box stage, which he surrounded with a grandiose frame. With its neo-baroque style, lavishly decorated on the inside, the Opera is unique among Parisian buildings of the time, most of which were built in the style of Classicism and Historimus. Garnier’s pompous design of the building was intended to reflect the fact that in the 19th century, going to the opera was primarily a social event. It was about seeing and being seen.

The interior of the Opéra Garnier

In keeping with these needs, the architect created an appropriate “stage” for the audience to “see and be seen” with a spectacular marble staircase, the impressive Grand Foyer, the beautiful round Salon du Glacier, and finally the enormous auditorium decorated in red and golden hues. The importance of this “seeing-and-being-seen” is also reflected in Garnier’s construction plan. He planned a similar amount of space for the foyer and staircase as for the entire stage area, and the size of the grand foyer with its galleries corresponds roughly to that of the auditorium.

Even today, a visit to the Opéra Garnier is still a social event. Incidentally, the ceiling painting in the dome above the auditorium, created by Marc Chagall in 1964, forms a stark contrast to the rest of the opera house’s interior. The Chagall ceiling still leads to discussions among opera-goers today. If you can no longer get tickets for a performance, you can still visit the Opéra Garnier during the day and get an impression of this magnificent building.

The Phantom of the Opera

The Opéra Garnier is also world famous for its mysterious “inhabitant” – the Phantom of the Opera. The real background to the story of the Phantom was mysterious noises coming from underground during the first performances, as well as an accident, never fully explained, in which a counterweight of the chandelier, weighing several tons, fell down in 1896 and killed a concierge. These events and the fear of the theater people of the eerie basement, its labyrinthine corridors and an underground lake, created the myth surrounding the opera ghost. The lake, which is navigated by the Phantom of the Opera with his barge, is actually (not very romantically) an artificial groundwater reservoir that has to be pumped empty by the fire department on a regular basis.