six anecdotes that you didn’t know about the temple of the Paris Opera

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All Parisians know its sparkling silhouette dominating the perspective of Avenue de l’Opéra. The Palais Garnier celebrates its 150 ans on January 5, 2025. In this majestic setting the greatest voices and the greatest dancers in the world paraded. But behind the splendor and the gala evenings, the temple of the Paris Opera hides many secrets. A rich story made up of small details and unusual anecdotes. Here are some examples.

“The greatest opera in the world”

January 5, 1875, after 14 years of work led 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 2,000 guests came to France from all over Europe, including crowned heads. It was necessary to work in a hurry to deliver the monument on time. On the day of the inauguration, the paint was barely dry.

“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 tthree times the size of a Broadway stage! » Since then, it has been overtaken by that of Bastille, the largest opera house in Europe, with its immense hall and its colossal stage allowing the sets to be stored without having to dismantle them.

Cockfight between Haussmann and Garnier

Currently hidden by a tarpaulin installed due to renovation, the facade of the Palais Garnier, composed of polychrome materials, golden masks, medallions and allegories, is striking with its opulenceand contrasts with the rigorous architecture of Baron Haussmann.

” THE two men didn’t get along. Haussmann had built buildings around it that were a little taller than planned. Garnier, angry, added a few meters to his facade,” says the guide.

Lodge number 5 is haunted

The interior is also majestic, between its monumental staircase, its different marbles, its large flamboyant fireplace. If the building, classified as a “historic monument” in 1923, is so visited 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.

And what about the scene, which saw pass the greatest dancers from the Russian Tamara Toumanova to the Frenchman Patrick Dupond, and to hear the voices of Maria Callas or Fyodor Chaliapin.

The legends that have inhabited the theater are not all made of blood and bones, as the box number 5 : “It’s the one that Eric the ghost had requisitioned, in Gaston Leroux’s novel,” explains Mr. Serres. The author of Phantom of the Opera (1910) had imagined this character who, hiding a face damaged by an accident under a mask, came to listen to a soprano with whom he was in love.

An underground lake and capstans

On the fifth floor, there is… a lake. Or rather, a huge tankused by Garnier as a counterweight to stabilize the foundations of the building, precious water since “fire was the main enemy of performance halls”, recalls Mr. Serres. “Today, the tank is used by firefighters” to practice diving in a closed environment.

Don’t we often compare the Palais Garnier to a large ocean liner? The metaphor takes on its full meaning inold engine room where rows of capstans and ropes are lined up. Handled by elders sailors 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.

A shelter during the Second World War

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”. This is because the Opera served as refuge “to the people of the neighborhood during the Second World War,” explains the guide. A line “H” for height marks the water level during the flood of January 31, 1910.

An elephant and little rats

One day an elephant found its way into the bowels of Garnier. A so-called “elephant” staircase attests to this: he saw a pachyderm loaned by a circus pass by for a performance of Gallant Indies by Rameau.

The Opera bestiary does not stop there. You have certainly already heard of the famous little rats? But no matter how hard you look, you won’t find them here. On the upper floors, only the personal or collective boxes of the 154 dancersballet and, at the top, five rehearsal studios. The future dancers in training moved in 1987 to a school with contemporary architecture located in Nanterre.

With AFP.

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