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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Next,

"We too can mingle with the gods"