My first stop this morning was Opéra Garnier, to buy a ticket for a guided tour, which was in an hour. I spent that time taking photos of the exterior of the Palais:
and walking randomly around the area, ending up at the Place Vendôme as I saw Napoleon's column, celebrating the victory of Austerlitz for afar and decided to find it:
I guess the fact that I walked past Tiffany and Cartier and quite a few other luxury jewellery stores on the way should have been a hint, but I was very surprised by the range of stores and hotels in the square. There was Chanel and Dior and others, all with very sparkly jewllery in the windows with no price tags.
Anyway, back to the Opéra Garnier, for which I warn you, I will go into way too much detail, since I went on a tour and it is a topic I'm interested in. I was looking forward to seeing the Palais, and it didn't disappoint, despite the fact that the auditorium wasn't open for visits due to a rehearsal.
The theatre was commissioned by Napolean III during a period when going to see a performance meant something very difference from nowadays. The audience was split up into two categories, those with season tickets who bought a box for every night for the entire season, and those with single tickets, degradingly called renters. As you can probably guess, upper class people were season subscribers and lower class people or foreigners bought single tickets. Now if you were a subscriber, and went to the theatre every night, you would end up watching the same show many times over. So it wasn't for the performances that these people came every night, but for the social interaction, and the theatre was designed with this in mind.
There are three difference entrances to the building, One fr the renters, one for the subscribers and one for royalty. Inside the theatre, the areas for each were laid out such that there was minimal to no interaction between them, and each was decorated very differently. The renter's area was very plain, while the subscribers area was very sumptuous, with a marvellous staircase with lots of overlooking balconiesand two foyers full of gold and art:
You would think that the imperial entrances would be just as grand, but they are surprisingly plain, with just raw stone walls. This is because Napolean want to war with Prussia during the construction, and lost, after which France became a republic whose government wouldn’t pay for the building. So Garnier completed his opera house with very little funds, leaving the imperial entrances unfinished, since nobody would be using them.
Theatregoers still flocked to the performances, despite the royal boxes being empty, and their priority if been seen and seeing others meant a very different type of dynamic inside the auditorium. After the entrance parade on the staircase, people would go to their boxes and look at each other until the curtain went up, after which they would go to the back of their box, draw their curtains and talk, have dinner, sleep or whatever. The performers performed to half empty theatres most of the time! In fact, the auditorium always had some light throughout the performances for the audience.
Due to this audience dynamic, the boxes right next to the stage were the most desirable, since they are the most visible and also were lit by the stage. The stalls seating was the least desirable of the subscriber areas and only males bought those seats, supposedly for the view of the ballerinas and because females at the time couldn’t manoeuvre their skirts through the rows of seats.
Subscribers also had keys to their boxes and the opera house and were allowed to go anywhere they wanted in the theatre, including all backstage areas, like the dressing and rehearsal rooms, which is quite a strange concept, since that would distract the performers immensely. However, as you can probably guess, performers back then weren’t very respected by French audiences, particularly the ballerinas, who according to the tour guide were selected more for their looks rather than their dancing abilities. Most of them also came from poorer families and needed the money since wealthier girls would never show their lets in public like that. Supposedly, a status symbol of the time, if you were male, was dating a ballerina, since they were known to be very greedy and wanted clothes and jewellery and apartments with servants from their suitors.
Anyway, it obviously isn’t like that nowadays, mainly due to foreign influences on the French theatre from countries where the performers were respected, like Russia, Italy and Germany. I wish I could see a performance in the palais, but nothing is showing there for the nights that I’m here, which is why I’m lining up here for last minute, standing tickets…
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