The Opera & it’s phantom… my tour of the Palais Garnier
I love the opera, I love ballet. Yes, I love the arts. So after having spoken about Repetto, I was inspired to talk about the Palais Garnier (after having shared a few months back one of my visits to the Opera Bastille), here is just a little bit of info and LEGEND about the phantom of the Opera….
Even those who have never visited my lovely “City of Lights” are acquainted with the Palais Garnier through Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera, written in 1910. Leroux was a frequent visitor and explored the backstage areas and inner sanctions. One tragedy aided in his literary work, where Leroux took poetic license in his novel, when a portion of a chandelier fell and killed one of the opera patrons. This has since led to the legend of the Phantom of the Opera here, at the Palais!
Napoleon III formulated competition in search of an architect to design the structure to rival any of the existing opera houses in Italy. Charles Garnier won this competition with his design although he was relatively unknown with limited experience and despite lots of setbacks, completed it 15 years later.
It is now situated on a super busy boulevard but you can still go and just visit the building, go to the first floor balcony to admire the views and of course, attend a ballet or opera. The pictures above were taken when I last took my son there for a tour. He loved it! The place is so ornate and grandiose! This is their website and below is the next representations I have tickets too! I am a lucky lucky lady and am GRATEFUL for it!
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Ah! I love it! I did a tour here as well last summer and the most exciting part was learning that there is a lake underneath. But I have to say that I really don’t like the artwork above the chandelier…
it’s all very baroque isnt it!