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Bling, wealthy men & ballerinas – the Opéra's unspoken priorities
Decoding the monument, exploring the neighborhood
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 - Visit by the king of Cambodia, July 1906
Today the 19th-century opéra house is indeed a center of cultural life in Paris. Yet instead of taking it at the face value that was trumpeted when it was built ("we are extremely cultivated"), we decipher it.
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An ideal place to distinguish between the image one may seek to project and real preoccupations, it is fascinating for its tour de force – transforming vulgarity into grandeur.
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- We don't immediately mount the great stairs as the imperious Avenue de l'Opéra almost
commands us to do...
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 - Thirteen similar statues cluster here.
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 - "Coming, honey?"
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...but circle the edifice to discover a colonnade of nudes, different in their sensuality from the cold deities that adorn official buildings of the time. They surround a discreet entry, whose railing gives onto an empty space... at the epicenter of the most expensive part of the 19th-century city. Clue... |
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- Then we examine the main entrance...
 - "Too much gold !", inauguration review (1874)
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Its gaudiness reflects the taste of "nouveaux riches" – a taste that has little in common with the high culture the façade trumpets ("BEETHOVEN MOZART..." ). |
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- Inside we come upon IMAX-scale glamor
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 - Grand staircase, 1888
Clues: The staircase's narrowest point is just wide enough for two hoopskirts to pass. Balconies allow exchanging glances and watching allies and rivals ascend the stairs...
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 - Grand Foyer ("the Nave")
Hint: No indoor secular space could hold more than 200 people. Here, 2000 could circulate during the two hour-long intermissions...
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- The Grand Foyer's painting: passionate, dramatic and forgotten, a masterpiece with no heirs
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 - "Eurydice returns to the land of the dead", by Paul Baudry
Frescos, the form of art that impresses the most, cover the Grand Foyer's whole ceiling, which is as large as the entire façade (50 mètres). They are a major expresssion of art inherited from nobles – please CLICK.
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- At the far end of the Grand Foyer we come to an immense empty space
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 - Huge, empty, costly space
It is emphatically uninviting. But such expensive space must have a purpose. Clue...
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 - Salon, with a glimpse of its surprising décor
The passage leads to this salon. The hard-to-notice entry behind the space that the nudes' colonnade surrounds does too. Could these voids be a boundary?
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- The salon's ceiling is decorated by an orgy
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 - Nymphs and satyrs frolic over the ceiling in a salon reserved to males.
Hint: Donors, who were exclusively male, financed performances. This was their salon, where they might dine while awaiting the end of the second act. Then – following a practice that dates from the Sun King's court and is exclusive to Paris – the corps de ballet would go on stage.
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After the ballerinas' performance, dancers and donors would progress to a lovely room, specifically designed for arranging trysts...We show a picture of this room, with dancers and donors as imagined at the time. The romanticized image contributed to creating Paris's legend as the City of – temporary – Love.
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- "C'est ma danseuse !" ("It's my dancer!")
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 - "Backstage", by Degas. We show the little-known series.
The expression is still used to indicate any hugely expensive pastime that one undertakes for pleasure and that gives no return. It harks back to the Opéra's ballet dancers, whose favors were usually for sale at sky-high prices. From humble backgrounds, often illiterate, these very young women left no records. We know about them only through men.
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By interpreting certain Opéra regulations and donors' fury when after a successful strike (in 1911) many dancers refused such "patronage", we give a more objective account of "the elite of Parisian pleasures" (Balzac).
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- Legacy of the Opéra and its dancers
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 - "Rue de la Paix", by Jean Béraud (toward 1900)
The ballerinas entered legend. Visiting millionaires often considered trysts with them part of the Parisian experience. To encourage their sumptuous presents, jewellers settled on Rue la Paix (A minute's walk from the Opéra and the most expensive street in the traditional Monopoly game) and Place Vendôme.
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The consequences, which have no direct connection with commerce, are stupefying...
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°Déjeuner: restaurants that have a soul °Afternoon tea or apéritif: at the piano bar of a famous hotel, especially since the great hotels that cluster near the Opéra are part of our story's conclusion... °Dinner: in one of the restaurants mentioned above or in a lovely salon particulier, where admirers invited the most dazzling courtesans and which a celebrated restaurant preserves. Mirrors they scratched to check the authenticity of diamond gifts are still there...
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"I was impressed by what you told us about the Opera House. You spoke as if we were witnessing those donors, who were eating and drinking during the performances, were there for the ballet dancers and didn't care about culture a bit. It was an inside story of that time's bling. I hope we meet again some day." - Toyoko Hagiwara (Tokyo)
"I loved the passion with which you tell history!" - Camilla Ferdomo (Bogota) |
- We bring these and other pictures to illustrate the visit.
•Costs: Please CLICK
There is an entry fee.
Credits: Parade / "Le Petit Journal", July 11, 1906; Statue / Felix Sinpraseuth; graphic novel / Alex Varenne; Opéra at night / Julien Debure; Grand Staircase / courtesy Opéra archives; other photos / Claude Abron
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