Description
The Palais Garnier is the opera house of Paris, built between 1861 and 1875 for Napoleon III, with 1,979 seats. It is probably the most famous opera house in the world, and since the Opéra Bastille opened in 1989 it is above all the home of the Paris Opera Ballet.
The facade alone has seventeen kinds of stone and marble, gilded groups of Harmony and Poetry on the roof, and gilt bronze busts of composers such as Rossini, Beethoven and Mozart. Inside there is no empty space: velvet, gold leaf, nymphs and cherubs.
The Grand Staircase, of white marble with balustrades in red and green marble, is the real stage: the audience was meant to be seen. The Grand Foyer, 18 meters high and 54 meters long, was made to be the drawing room of Paris society.
The horseshoe auditorium hangs under a seven-ton bronze and crystal chandelier. The ceiling is Chagall's, painted in 1964 over the original, with scenes from the operas of fourteen composers. Some find it a false note in Garnier's design.
The building also holds a library-museum, the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, with nearly 600,000 documents: manuscripts, photographs and administrative records. The Grand Staircase was inspired by Victor Louis's theater in Bordeaux, and the Grand Foyer's ceiling has paintings by Paul Baudry celebrating the history of music.
On 20 May 1896 a counterweight of the great chandelier broke loose, crashed through the ceiling into the auditorium and killed a concierge. Fourteen years later Gaston Leroux put the accident in a novel. Its title: The Phantom of the Opera.
Leroux found more ideas in the building itself. Digging the foundations in 1862, the workers hit groundwater that eight steam pumps, running day and night, could not dry. Charles Garnier answered with a huge concrete cistern under the stage. Soon Paris was whispering about a lake beneath the Opera.
The new opera house had been wanted by Napoleon III, after an attempt on his life at the door of the old one in 1858. Garnier, little known and 35 years old, won the competition with the motto "Hope for much, expect little".
When Empress Eugénie asked what style it was, the story goes, he replied: "Napoléon III, Madam."
Don't miss
• The Grand Staircase.
• Chagall's ceiling.
• The Grand Foyer.
Did you know?
• In the rush to open, the Salons of the Sun and of the Moon got their themes swapped.
• The Grand Foyer has eight Muses, not nine: there was no room for Polyhymnia.
The facade alone has seventeen kinds of stone and marble, gilded groups of Harmony and Poetry on the roof, and gilt bronze busts of composers such as Rossini, Beethoven and Mozart. Inside there is no empty space: velvet, gold leaf, nymphs and cherubs.
The Grand Staircase, of white marble with balustrades in red and green marble, is the real stage: the audience was meant to be seen. The Grand Foyer, 18 meters high and 54 meters long, was made to be the drawing room of Paris society.
The horseshoe auditorium hangs under a seven-ton bronze and crystal chandelier. The ceiling is Chagall's, painted in 1964 over the original, with scenes from the operas of fourteen composers. Some find it a false note in Garnier's design.
The building also holds a library-museum, the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra, with nearly 600,000 documents: manuscripts, photographs and administrative records. The Grand Staircase was inspired by Victor Louis's theater in Bordeaux, and the Grand Foyer's ceiling has paintings by Paul Baudry celebrating the history of music.
On 20 May 1896 a counterweight of the great chandelier broke loose, crashed through the ceiling into the auditorium and killed a concierge. Fourteen years later Gaston Leroux put the accident in a novel. Its title: The Phantom of the Opera.
Leroux found more ideas in the building itself. Digging the foundations in 1862, the workers hit groundwater that eight steam pumps, running day and night, could not dry. Charles Garnier answered with a huge concrete cistern under the stage. Soon Paris was whispering about a lake beneath the Opera.
The new opera house had been wanted by Napoleon III, after an attempt on his life at the door of the old one in 1858. Garnier, little known and 35 years old, won the competition with the motto "Hope for much, expect little".
When Empress Eugénie asked what style it was, the story goes, he replied: "Napoléon III, Madam."
Don't miss
• The Grand Staircase.
• Chagall's ceiling.
• The Grand Foyer.
Did you know?
• In the rush to open, the Salons of the Sun and of the Moon got their themes swapped.
• The Grand Foyer has eight Muses, not nine: there was no room for Polyhymnia.