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The Opéra - social climbing, sex & majesty
A site that lends itself to decoding
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Visits to the great 19th-century opera-house usually take the edifice at face value ("We are extremely cultivated") and stress its opulence ("There are 384 kinds of marble"). But we decode it as a detective might.
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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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...instead we circle the edifice to discover a colonnade of nudes, different in their sensuality from the cold abstractions that adorn official buildings of the time. They surround a rotunda and a discreet entry, whose railing gives onto an empty space... at the epicenter of the 19th-century most fashionable part of the 19th-century city, such emptiness was costly. Clue... |
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- Then we examine the main entrance...
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 - "Too much gold!", inauguration remark, 1874
The edifice's gaudiness reflects the taste of "nouveaux riches" - a taste that has little in common with the high culture the façade trumpets ("BEETHOVEN", "MOZART... |
 - Visit by the king of Cambodia, July 1906
An ideal place to distinguish between the image one may seek to project and real preoccupations, the Opéra is fascinating for its tour de force: transforming vulgarity into grandeur.
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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 crinolines 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
Fifty meters of frescoes, the form of art that impresses most, cover a ceiling that is as long as the giant façade. Unveiled in the same year as the first Impressionist exhibit (in 1874), they are the last flowering of France's epic art. Twenty years later, tastes had changed... |
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- At the far end of the Grand Foyer we come to an immense empty space
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 - Frontier?
It is emphatically uninviting. But such expensive space must have a purpose. Clue...
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 - Painting: surprising subject for a public building
The passage leads to this salon - as does the entry that the nudes' colonnade surrounds.
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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.
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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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At the end of its performance, dancers and donors would progress to a lovely room, specifically designed for arranging trysts...
We show an image of the time, which contributed to creating Paris's legend as the City of 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.
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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, usually 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)
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The ballerinas entered legend. Visiting millionaires often considered trysts with them part of the Parisan experience. To encourage their sumptuous presents, jewellers settled on rue la Paix 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 abover 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) |
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Statue / Felix Sinpraseuth; graphic novel / Alex Varenne; Opéra at night / Julien Debure; Parade / "Le Petit Journal", July 11, 1906 ; Grand Staircase / courtesy Opéra archives
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