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, during a tour of the building. With 27 meters depth, 48 meters wide (backstage included), 60 meters high, its “scene is then the biggest. It’s three times the size of a Broadway stage!”
At the time, the building was lit by thousands of gas lamps. The emerging electricity is not yet considered reliable enough to equip the entire building. From 1881, however, the 340 gas burners in the theater's large chandelier were replaced by electric bulbs. The Opéra Garnier is one of the first Parisian buildings to benefit from a complete electrical installation. The neighboring Avenue de l'Opéra was also the first Parisian artery to experiment with electric public lighting in 1878.
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 Maria Callas was recalled 21 times!
The interior is also majestic, with its monumental staircase, its different marbles and its rooms rivaling each other in gilding.
Since its opening, the highlights have followed one another, thanks to the stars who have performed there. It was at the Paris Opera that Maria Callas triumphed for the first time, on December 19, 1958, with a unique recital broadcast on television, in front of an audience of celebrities including Charlie Chaplin and Brigitte Bardot.
The “Divine” performed again on the Garnier stage in 1964 and 1965. On February 20, 1965, the AFP described the diva’s triumph: “Twenty-one encores this evening greeted Maria Callas who performed La Tosca for the first time at the Opera. From the orchestra to the amphitheater (…), the applause crackled, the fans chanting -Cal-as, Cal-as- while a shower of bouquets continued to fall on the stage”.
Rudolf Nureyev: the “rockstar you ballet”
Among the legendary figures who graced the Garnier stage, the Russian dancer and choreographer Rudolf Nureyev, whose choreographies are still regularly danced. About twenty years after his spectacular passage to the West at Le Bourget airport, keeping company with KGB agents while he was on tour, he will be director of the Paris Opera ballet, appointed in September 1983 by Culture Minister Jack Lang.
For his first season at Garnier, Nureyev performs the Russian ballet “Raymonda”. The Soviet agency Tass then welcomed the spectacle which “enriches the repertoire of Parisian theater” but makes no mention of the defector dancer.
This “rockstar you ballet” -compliment of ex-dancer Manuel Legris, himself named star dancer by Nureyev in 1986- was cut down on January 6, 1993 by AIDS. Uniquely, his remains are honored in the Garnier enclosure, his coffin carried up the monumental staircase by six of his former star dancers.
A Chagall ceiling to make your head unscrew
If the building, classified “historical monument” in 1923, is so visited each year – a million people in 2023 – it is also for the brightly colored canvases and aerial characters sewn to the ceiling of the auditorium, designed by 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 taste for the original ceiling by Jules-Eugène Lenepveu. This original decoration by the academic painter nevertheless remains, under Chagall's panels. And some are campaigning for them to be dismantled, at least temporarily, to make Lenepveu's ceiling visible again.
The Phantom of the Opera
Among the lodges, the fifth is special: “It’s the one that Eric the ghost had requisitioned, in Gaston Leroux’s novel”, explains Jean-Jacques Serres. The author of “The 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 and Fyodor Chaliapin heard.
It is precisely in the “cage” of stage, namely the space which surrounds it above and below, that will take place, from the summer of 2027, work to modernize the equipment and renovation preventing any show from being held there during two years.
Everything to avoid fires
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”, reminds the speaker. “Today, the tank is used by firefighters” so that they can practice diving in a closed environment.
Behind the scenes
Behind the scenes, we also enter the old engine room, with rows of capstans and ropes. Manipulated by “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 underneath and its trapdoor, which allows Giselle, the ballet heroine, to disappear, while, on a wall, there is the inscription “abri A”, because the Opera was used of 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 “Gallant Indies” by Rameau.
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) no longer look for them: there are no has more little rats.
