The Paris opera house Le Palais Garnier is where it all happened. Emperor Napoleon III of France needed a new opera house, and this extraordinarily beautiful building was surrected with the grace only of the Frenchmen. Monsieur Charles Garnier was the lucky architect to build the Paris Opera House. The land where the Le Palais Garnier stood is called Le Place de l'Opera. Construction of the Opera House was interrupted in 1870 by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, but the Paris Opera House finally opened in 1875. La Belle Epoque had begun!
Le Palais Garnier is the largest theatre in the world, although it will only hold an audience of a little over 2,000 people. (Haining, 1992)
The vestibule, which is paved with handsome mosaic, rather resembles the crypt of a Byzantine temple. At the top is a gallery leading to the Grand Foyer containing a series of arches beautifully decorated with marqueterie of coloured marbles made originally by Venetian artists from the island of Murano. The overwhelming feeling is one of entering a world of timeless grandeur mixed with an air of almost imponderable mystery.
When finished, the Opera contained no less than seventeen floors, a vast maze of stairways and corridors, lifts, ladders and chutes, all interconnected yet so complex that it was easy for any unwary person to get lost. As if this is not enough, there are at least 2,500 doors!
For the performers, Garnier built some eighty dressing rooms, with anterooms and wardrobe closets for the leading artists, and eight other huge dressing rooms which could accomodate from twenty to two hundred members of the chorus and orchestra! For the Emperor Napoleon, he also contructed a whole private section, complete with salons, cloakrooms and guard rooms, with below these a permanent stable able to accommodate over one hundred people, six coaches and as many as fifty horses! In another equally huge section, Garnier made provision for the storage of every possible kind of prop that might be required for a production - from a hat box to a virtually life-size sailing galleon!
The acoustics are magnificent and the view from the top balconies dizzying. (And I thought the Wang Center in Boston was high!) If you ever get a chance to visit France, you have GOT to see the Paris Opera House!
NOTE: References are listed here.
©Copyright 1998-2001 Kristen Boyer. All Rights Reserved.
Last modified 06 Nov 2001