Garnier, Paris Opéra - Humanities, Arts Video Lecture - Humanities/Arts

(piano playing)
Man: We're in The Paris
Opera by Charles Garnier.
Now, this was a project
that was very much a part
of Napoleon III's reconstruction of Paris
with the help of Baron Haussmann
who was creating boulevards
and a city of spectacle.
Girl: Haussmann was hired to
really modernize the City of Paris
to get rid of those old winding
streets to provide sewers,
to bring light into the streets.
The Paris that we see today
is very much the Paris
of Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III.
In fact, when we look from the
balconies of the Opera House
we really see all of those broad avenues
that remind us of impressionist paintings.
Man: There's no question
that one of the great crowns
of Napoleon III's reign and of Haussmann's
reconstruction of Paris is
the work of Charles Garnier
and the Paris Opera.
Girl: It's unbelievably opulent.
There's colored marble
and paintings and mosaics.
Man: This is a second
empire style at its height.
I think what's important to
remember of course is that
this is a theatre, it was where the ballet
where the opera was housed
until actually quite recently.
Ballet still continues here
although the opera itself has moved.
Of course, there's a grand stage.
In fact, you can just hear the
orchestra practising as we speak.
If you look at the roof line,
you can see that there's a raised
area just the back of the dome.
That's actually the pulleys for
raising and lowering the scenery
that protrudes out of the top.
That wonderful copper dome which
is now that brilliant green
is a false dome and that
there's a second dome inside.
Between those 2 domes is the
area that the great chandelier
would be retracted into
during performances.
That chandelier apparently
weighs something like 7 tons.
Girl: You walk into this great
foyer and there's an enormous
broad staircase with
chandeliers and engaged columns,
plasters and a painted ceiling.
Man: A kind of series
arabesques that speak
to the 2nd empire style
especially this curvilinear
nature of the staircase.
The extraordinary, and as
you said, opulent spaces
that are given over for
socializing before the performance,
during the intermission
and after the performance
is nearly as much as is given
over the stage, the orchestra
and in fact the audience
in the theatre itself
which is to say that the
front-half of this building
is its own stage but it is
the stage of the 2nd empire.
Girl: What it does is it
gives us a really good idea
of how radical Degas
was by going back stage,
by not showing us the public face,
by showing us the rehearsal
rooms, the dancers waiting,
their chaperone's waiting.
Man: You're absolutely right.
To understand the radically of Degas,
one really needs to see the
front of the opera house.
All the formality, all
the pump, all the ceremony
is given over to this direct
observation of these figures
in a far less than ideal position.
Degas of course also painted
the front part of the house
and he painted certainly
the stage on occasion.
There are those other wonderful
paintings by Mary Cassatt
of the woman in the balcony
of her sister for instance.
That is another expression in the sense of
the audience as show piece.
Girl: The idea of giving
us the unusual view.
One has a different perspective on
the radicality of that approach.
Man: Although, I think Garnier
is a sense responsible for that.
Because if for instance, we're
in the grand foyer at the moment.
If you look, there are balconies
that give you very particular
but very radical views of the space,
variety of different angles.
In the boxes, the theatre
itself is round around the back
and the boxes are all giving
you probably 180 degrees
of different angles.
In a sense, the architecture is
speaking to these shifting positions.
Girl: Providing that focus on
the individual bourgeoisie,
upper bourgeoisie.
Man: Yes. And the individual experience.
Girl: And their point of view.
Man: For instance, every
box has its own doorway.
Every boxes rolled off from the other,
it's got curtains to draw back.
So there is this notion of the bourgeoisie
and separate bourgeoisie experience.
You're absolutely right.
There's no question that the
entire building is in a sense,
it is for music, it is
for the movement of dance,
but it is really about seeing.
(piano playing)