When we were in Paris the opera house became a bit of a joke. It was something both of us wanted to see, and it was only about ten minutes from our apartment, but for some reason we kept missing it. Finally, a couple of days before we left, we made it over on a rainy day.
And we got lucky. A sign outside said the main auditorium was closed for rehearsals, but about five minutes after we went in rehearsals were apparently over. It's a pretty magnificent theater, so I'm glad we got to see it.
I have four pictures of the opera house for you today. From top to bottom:
- The auditorium.
- The main staircase.
- A side room used (I assume) for milling around during intermissions.
- A view from the balcony looking out on Avenue de l'Opera.
All except the last one are massive panoramas that were stitched together in Photoshop.
Lovely and impressive photos, although all the deformed folks on the stairs in the second one are a little distracting. Fun fact: my mother danced there with the Paris Opera Ballet for over 20 years. These pictures are a nice reminder of her and that wonderful space. Thanks for sharing.
Oh, wow! Very cool!
The colors seem bright, does it really look like that?
Yes! I think I added saturation to the auditorium picture, just because I liked it that way. The others are pretty close to reality.
The place seems a bit understated and plain to me.
Really? Looks like Mar - A - La - Go.
Been there, done that, for an opera. It really is quite beautiful
Absolute monarchy is absolute.
Went to school in Paris 1966-67, often without enough money for an extra métro ticket so I walked around a lot and must have passed that opera house a hundred times.
I always assumed it was for opera and that you couldn't go in just for a look. What a missed opportunity-- I never would have thought that there was a public building anywhere in the world that could look like that from the inside!
Also, re that Rodin Museum you featured before. Back then it was free entry and you could go over there with a sandwich any old time and eat it looking at the statues. The story was that when Rodin gave the ground to the city he made them promise there would never be an entry price. But last time I was in town I went there with my tunafish half-baguette and it was like, fifteen dollars to get in.
Stop taking pictures, man, this is too brutal. Not even sixty years later they're making you pay to get into the musée Rodin and the inside of the opera house is revealed to look like a bombed-out clown college. La forme d'une ville change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel.