Paris Opera House

By popular demand, I'm going to share all the cool facts I learned during the Palais Garnier Opera house tour. If you're in Paris, GO! It's only 4 euros more than just walking around by yourself and it is totally worth it. I warn you this will be a long post, but if you're interested in the history of an iconic building (and a certain ALW musical) then you'll enjoy it.

• Charles Garnier was the architect of the Palais Garnier. He was chosen through a contest Napoleon III did. Charles Garnier was 35 years old and had never had an architecture job before. The opera house was his first and last job.
• This was the 13th opera house in Paris. The first 11 burnt down due to lighting (candles and gas lighting) and the 12th because someone tried to kill Napoleon III with a bomb.
• The land where the opera house was built was completely empty. Napoleon bulldozed literally most of the city and rebuilt it the way he wanted. No one knew this particular plot of land was a swamp. They spent 8 months pumping the water out for 12 hours a day. Needless to say this had a huge effect on the neighborhood who went through a major drop in their water supply for nearly 2 years.
• There is no underground lake!!!! None! No river, no lake, period! It's a big tank where they stored all that water they pumped. It works as a counterbalance for the huge building, stabilizing it as well as acting as an emergency water supply in case of fire (remember they had already lost 12 opera houses to fire).
• The construction took 14 years, mostly because of the massive changes in French government and lack of funding. There are still major parts of the opera house that are completely unadorned simply because they ran out of cash.
• The opera house was not built for opera. You didn't go to the opera to see a show. You went there to be seen, to socialize, to establish your business connections, to find a husband for your daughter, etc. Because of this, most of the spaces in the opera house are meant for socialization.
• First things first, there were two different entrances: one for the rich members and one for everyone else otherwise known as poor people. Funny enough, the poor people entrance is the one used now and most people wouldn't even think twice about using a different entrance. Why was this the poor people's entrance? It has steps...lots of them. So if you stepped outside your carriage, you had to walk through the rain or snow.
• The rich people's entrance is no longer used, but had a round about where you could pull up your carriage and get out under an overhang. Then you would go into a rotunda, down a long corridor with one last look at yourself in two floor to ceiling mirrors and make your grand entrance.
• If you were rich, you would go up two sets of marble steps. These led you to a landing that was literally like a stage. All the balconies looked down on you. If you screwed up your entrance, it would literally ruin your social standing and possibly your business.

• From the "stage" you could walk to the balconies to chat and observe or you could move to one of the socializing rooms. There were two small vestibules, one that represented night and one that represented day. Unfortunately, the ceiling paintings were put in at such a rush that they were put in the wrong place! The bats that were supposed to be in the night part, were put in the day part and the salamander & dragon ended up in the night one.
• There are several motifs that end up all over the opera house. One is the salamander, traditionally seen as controlling fire (remember, very important in those days). There was also much of Apollo, the god of music and theater.
• From the vestibules, you can head to the hall of mirrors into the area that used to be the restaurant. The restaurant had no formal menu, only tapestries that showed what was available for each course. They go in a circle around the room starting with the first course all the way to the dessert. For example, there was one with a woman holding a chicken. What's the main dish? Chicken. Right after that was a Japanese woman holding leaves. What's after main course? Tea.
• In the other direction, you could head into the grandest and most elaborate part of the Opera house: the foyer. "Foyer" comes from the French word "fireplace" because usually it was place where you would first step in and warm yourself. The two massive fireplaces in the foyer are decorative, however, as there are grates all along the floor where hot air was pumped in. Women were not allowed in this part of the opera house and basically were expected to stay in their boxes and receive guests there. But that all changed when the Queen of Spain showed up and mossied her way into the foyer. All the French women followed her and the foyer was mixed from then on.
• Garnier wanted this part to look spectacular...unfortunately, he had almost completely run out of money. He originally wanted the ceilings to be mosaic, but the tile artist said it would take 10 years. Garnier hired a painter instead who wanted to do frescos so was sent for three years to study frescoes in Italy. He came back and said frescoes were too hard. So they sent him elsewhere to study painting...then a war broke out and finally by the time he came back and finished the paintings...it had been 10 years. Also, Garnier wanted lots of gold. But, no money. So they used less than 2 kilos of gold for the entire room, but placed in strategic places where it would catch the sun. The result is that the whole room looks golden.
• Besides the rich people and the poor people's entrance, there was one more entrance to the opera house: Napoleon III's entrance. Remember, he wanted a secure entrance as he had almost been killed by a bomb at the last opera house. This was going to be the Fort Knox of opera entrances, with special carriage pull-in, super thick walls as well as a little apartment for the royal family and guests to hang out in until the performance started. But Napoleon III never got to use it because 14 years later, he was no longer in power. So this entrance is mostly unfinished and is being renovated to become part of the opera house museum. The apartment is now part of the museum as well as part of the French National Library.
• Now for the auditorium...remember, no one came to the Opera for the show, they came to be seen. Therefore, the most expensive seats were the absolute worst seats of today. They are almost perpendicular to the stage so you can barely see the ballet/opera. Why were these the most expensive? Because everyone could see you and see how rich you were. The higher up you got in the opera seating, the poorer you were. In fact, the main staircase was only for rich people and poor people had to use the side staircases. The boxes or "loges" as they are called actually have their own mini-living rooms. Since women weren't allowed to just walk around and socialize, it was a place to entertain, both before/after and during the performance.
• The stage itself is the largest Italian stage in the world. The audience only sees a small portion of it, but it goes up much higher and also extends down to the tank that stabilizes the whole building.
• The chandelier is massive and thankfully has never fallen...unfortunately, one of its counterweights did. In order to keep their rich members happy, the opera gave away free tickets to their members. Well, the members didn't really need them so they would give them away. Consequently, many people who could have never afforded to go to the opera (cleaners, servants, farmers, etc.) were able to go. The woman who was killed by the counterweight, was a cleaner who had received the free ticket and was going for the first time.
• The chandelier used to be lit by gas lighting. This has some obvious problems. Gas lighting from above makes everything look smaller or people shorter, so they had to use foot lights on the stage to illuminate the dancers/singers. Also the smoke from the chandelier greatly damaged the gorgeous mural painted above it. In 1964, Marc Chagall was asked to paint a new one in miniature that they would then expand and place on top of the old one. Because of this, the old one was completely ruined without any hope of restoration. Chagall's new painting was extremely controversial as it was a completely different style than anything in the opera house.
• The opera house has been going almost constant restoration since 1994 for several reasons one of them being the Metro. The Metro is very close to the Opera Garnier (several lines in fact) and the vibrations have shook up the place so much that large sections (especially on the top and in the administration area) have fallen down. One whole side of the opera house was under scaffolding when I was there (although it seemed as if most of Paris was under scaffolding period).

So that was the fun stuff I remembered from the tour. The tour guide was wonderful, very French and extremely knowledgeable.