EXCEPTIONALLY EXPENSIVE BECAUSE IT UNITED ALL THE ARTS, OPERA PROVIDED A PRETEXT FOR ELITES TO MEET ON NEUTRAL GROUND
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Age of Innocence by Martin Scorsese, 1995 |
A long sequence at the opera begins the story set in New York's high society of 1870.
The Industrial Revolution's "nouveaux riches" wished to mix with the nobility...
- But its salons were closed to them: "He's a banker who shows off his fortune... he's tried to come to see me..."
-- A marquise observing the banker's wife from her loge:
Balzac, Lost Illusions, 1843
Balzac, Lost Illusions, 1843
- Yet impoverished nobles might welcome such encounters as steps toward useful marriages.
The new Opéra was designed to facilitate the mix:
- The sculptures that flank the entrance of the performance space fade into a setting where costume is enhanced:
- The staircase divides to lead toward balconies, from which to observe the arrival of allies and rivals, exchange glances and be seen oneself:
Ball at the Opéra by Henry Gervex
- Loges and promenading space favor socializing during the two hour-long intermissions:
"The loge of the First Gentlemen [...]; one sees and is seen from all sides."
-- Lost Illusions
- In Paris, young men of fashion gossip wittily with a marquise. Her provincial guests are hopelessly outclassed. (Lost Illusions)
- In Moscow, the unsavory Kuragin begins seducing Natasha in a loge. (War and Peace)
- In Saint Petersburg, outcast Anna Karenina defies society by coming magnificently dressed and sitting in the front row. (Anna Karenina)
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Anna Karenina by Clarence Brown with Greta Garbo, 1935
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The promenading space is the Grand Foyer, where "light and color create a world without doubt or anxiety, a lost Arcadia."
-- Introduction, Les Peintures de l'Opéra de Paris by J. Foucart and L-A Prat, 1980
Opéra web site
It comfortably holds the public of 2000,
for whom meeting was often the real reason
for coming to the show.
* * *
for coming to the show.
* * *
Next,
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