On January 5, 1875, after 14 years of work carried out by the architect Charles Garnier, the monument commissioned by Napoleon III, which cost 36 million gold francs (329 million euros today), was inaugurated with great fanfare by Mac Mahon, President of the Republic, in the presence of 2,000 guests who came to France from all over Europe, including crowned heads.
“When it opened, it was the largest opera house in the world, hands down: 173 meters long, 125 meters wide,” explains guide-lecturer Jean-Jacques Serres to AFP, on the occasion of a tour of the building. With 27 meters deep, 48 meters wide (backstage included), 60 meters high, “its stage is the largest. It’s three times the size of a Broadway stage! »
Classified as a “historical monument”
Currently hidden by a tarpaulin installed due to renovation, its facade with polychrome materials, golden masks, medallions and allegories, is striking for its opulence and contrasts with the rigorous architecture of Baron Haussmann.
“The two men did not get along. Haussmann had built buildings around it that were a little taller than expected. Garnier, angry, added a few meters to his facade,” says the guide.
When it opened, it was the largest opera house in the world, hands down: 173 meters long, 125 meters wide.
The interior is also majestic, between its monumental staircase and its different marbles.
If the building, classified as a “historic monument” in 1923, is visited so much each year – a million people in 2023 – it is also for the brightly colored canvases and aerial figures sewn to the ceiling of the auditorium, signed Marc Chagall.
This order, a tribute to 14 opera and ballet composers, came from the Minister of Culture André Malraux, in 1964, who had little appreciation for the original, damaged ceiling by Jules-Eugène Lenepveu.
The ghost’s lodge…
Among the boxes, number 5 is special: “It’s the one that Eric the ghost had requisitioned, in Gaston Leroux’s novel,” explains Jean-Jacques Serres. The author of “Phantom of the Opera” (1910) had imagined this character who, hiding under a mask a face damaged by an accident, came to listen to a soprano with whom he was in love.
And what about the stage which saw the greatest dancers, from the Russian Tamara Toumanova to the Frenchman Patrick Dupond, and the voices of Maria Callas or Fyodor Chaliapin heard…
It is precisely in the stage “cage”, namely the space which surrounds it above and below, that work to modernize the equipment and renovation will take place from the summer of 2027. preventing any show from being held there for two years.
Shelter during World War II
On the fifth floor, there is a huge reservoir used by Garnier as a counterweight to stabilize the foundations of the building, precious water since “fire was the main enemy of performance halls”, recalls Jean-Jacques Serres. “Today, the tank is used by firefighters” to practice diving in a closed environment.
We also enter the old engine room, with rows of capstans and ropes. Manipulated by the “trimmers” with the help of counterweights, they were used to raise or lower curtains and trompe-l’oeil canvases stored much higher, above the stage. They have since been replaced by electric motors.
Looking up, we see the first underside and its trapdoor, which allows Giselle, the ballet heroine, to disappear, while, on a wall, there is the inscription “shelter A” – the Opera served as a refuge “to the people of the neighborhood during the Second World War” – and a line “H” for height, marking the water level during the flood of January 31, 1910.
Another remarkable element: the so-called “elephant” staircase, which saw a pachyderm loaned by a circus for a performance of Rameau’s “Indes Galantes”.
On the upper floors are the personal or collective dressing rooms of the 154 dancers of the Ballet and, at the very top, five rehearsal studios… On the other hand, since their move in 1987 to Nanterre (west of Paris), look no further for them: there there are no more little rats.
