Inside Opéra Garnier

The girls and I finally made it inside   Palais Garnier.

To read more about the building, click here.

One of the counter weights to this chandelier crashed through the ceiling in 1896 and killed an audience member.  This event, as well as the building's underground lake and vast cellars, inspired Gaston Leroux's novel Phantom of the Opera.

The Palais Garnier is the thirteenth theatre to house the Paris Opera since it was founded by Louis XIV in 1669. It was built on the orders of Napoleon III as part of the great Parisian reconstruction project carried out by Baron Haussmann. The project for an opera house was put out to competition and was won by Charles Garnier, an unknown 35-year-old architect. Building work, which lasted fifteen years, from 1860 to 1875, was interrupted by numerous incidents, including the 1870 war, the fall of the Empire and the Commune. The Palais Garnier was inaugurated on 5 January 1875.

Chagall's mural was added in 1964 and was quite controversial, many thought that it clashed with Garnier's carefully orchestrated interior.

I was glad that we had been to the Chagall exhibit at Musée du Luxembourg and the Impressionism et la Mode exhibit at the Musée D'Orsay.  When wandering through the gilt hallways, it is easy to imagine when this was the place to see and to be seen.  Mary Cassatt did several paintings of women sitting in their boxes holding onto their opera glasses.  The binoculars were good for seeing the stage and even better for checking out who was wearing the latest fashions and who was with whom.

 

There are guided tours.  We chose to wander through by ourselves.  For self-guided tours, Adults are 10 Euros and kids are free.  

450,000 bees live on the roof of L'Opéra Garnier.  You can buy honey in the gift shop.