V.1. A PALACE FOR A NEW ELITE

5.1.1. A palace for a new elite

THE OPÉRA DOMINATES THE NEW IMPERIAL CAPITAL, A CITY

OF BANKS, SHIPPING AND INSURANCE COMPANIES, DEPARTMENT STORES...

The second tranche of the urban metamorphosis is built in the west to avoid rebels and pollution. 

View from the terrace of the Printemps department store

In brief

• A design that highlights power

• Where new and old money cross paths

• "We too can mingle with the gods"

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 A design that highlights power

A DESIGN THAT HIGHLIGHTS POWER

STRAIGHT STREET AND ROYAL MODEL

The imperious avenue de l'Opéra...

• Highlights the edifice as straight lines highlighted symbols of monarchy and as the avenue de Paris highlights Versailles: 

Snow on the Avenue de l'Opéra by Camille Pissaro, 1898 / zoom

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•  Was meant to connect the Opéra with the Tuileries and Louvre palaces, though the Tuileries burning has led to forgetting that tie:

  Web photo, no photographer named

• Remained the site of official parades until  World War I:

Place de l'Opéra adapts the monarchs' template:

• It is a public space toward which straight streets converge.

• Homogeneous architecture surrounds it.

• The edifice itself replaces the statue of the king.

Claude Abron

The Opéra is associated with Napoleon III

as Versailles is with Louis XIV.

Pamela Spurdon

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Where new and old money cross paths

WHERE NEW AND OLD MONEY CROSS PATHS

OPERA UNITED ALL THE ARTS AND EXCEPTIONALLY EXPENSIVE, GAVE OPPOSED ELITES A PRETEXT TO MEET ON NEUTRAL GROUND 

 

Age of Innocence by Martin Scorsese, 1995 

The story set in New York's high society of 1870 starts with a 10-minute sequence in the opera house. 

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

• Yet impoverished nobles might welcome such encounters as steps toward useful marriages. 

The new Opéra was designed to facilitate the mix:

• The sculptures on either side of the performance space entrance fade into a setting where costume is enhanced: 

     The Staircase at the Opéra by Louis Béroud, 1877 / zoom

• 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)

Anna Karenina by Clarence Brown with Greta Garbo, 1935

• At the Grand Foyer "Light and color create a world without doubt or anxiety, a lost Arcadia."

--  Introduction, The Paintings of the Opéra de Paris by J. Foucart and L-A Prat, 1980 (in French)

Opéra web site

It comfortably holds the public of 2000, 

for whom meeting there was often the real reason 
for coming to the show. 

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"We too can mingle with the gods"

"WE TOO CAN MINGLE WITH THE GODS"

ECONOMICALLY VICTORIOUS BUT SOCIALLY INSECURE, THE

NEWLY-RICH TAKE UP THE NOBLES' CODE

The Opéra decor is the last flowering of an art that linked nobles with the gods:

Grand Staircase ceiling by Isodore Pils, 1865

The theater's two ceilings, the modern placed over the original,

show the change of society and taste:

• The original made the public feel itself among the gods on Mount Olympus (in 1871).

By Jules Lenepveu

• Today's alludes to various operas, and has no tie with the rest of the decor:

By Chagall, 1964

The Opéra's inauguration and the first Impressionist exhibit

took place in the same year (1874-5). Reactions then: 

• The Opéra decor is the highest expression of French art. 

• Impressionism is "unfinished" scribbling and by idealizing every-day people, it is "Communard"*

* Giving Renoir an official commission would threaten the young republic, says the President (Gambetta, in 1877).

-- My Father by Jean Renoir, 1962

  

   Dance at the Moulin de la Galette by Auguste Renoir, 1876 / zoom

But a generation later the middle class knows its victory definitive, and adopts a code of its own.

Deities and heroes of Antiquity vanish and young, handsome, happy, ordinary people idealize a different humanity, and announce our ads.

 So ends the respectable part of our visit. 

End of this section.

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Next section,
VI, 2.
Backers, sex and money