II.7.2. BACKERS, SEX AND MONEY

2.7.2. Backers sex & money

OUR GUIDE STRIDES THROUGH AN EMPTY PASSAGE

TOWARD A BOARDED-UP DOOR

To the right of the passage is the salon of the "abonnés" (subscribers). It was the heart of the monument. 

Cyprian Leym

Those abonnés were

the wealthiest men in Paris.

• The backers who finance performances

• Detour: ballet, an art of the French court

• Millionaires and ballerinas

• Degas's "Little dancer"

• A ceiling decorated by an orgy

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The backers who finance performances

THE BACKERS WHO FINANCE PERFORMANCES

THE ABONNÉS FINANCED THE SHOWS BY RESERVING THE MOST EXPENSIVE SEATS 

Those magnates might use them for their families or visitors from the provinces, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Fridays for a year.

By Honoré Daumier

But the main attraction was dinner on those nights in a private salon next to the now sealed-off door. They reached it through an entrance created for them alone, after leaving their carriages in the huge space next to the edifice. 

The arrow points to coverings over tables of what is now a restaurant. Odd as it may seem, this view,  from a window of the passage the last page shows, is the only way to perceive the area's size: more later.

There the leaders of industry, commerce and culture connected, and met the most venerable nobility in a context as intimate and exclusive as that of a salon.

The dinners took place while awaiting the end of the ballet that took place after the opera's second act.

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 Detour: ballet, an art of the French court

DETOUR: BALLET, AN ART OF THE FRENCH COURT

 

IT BEGAN AS PROCESSIONS THAT ROYALS LED

(FROM ABOUT 1560)

Louis XIII and Anne of Austria conducted them or observed the ritualized dances that followed:  

     The Ball by Abraham Bosse, 1634 / zoom 

Maurice Leloir in Richelieu by Théodore Cahu, 1901, a history of France for children

They were allegories about royals that young members of the court performed. In his youth Louis XIV, an excellent dancer, starred:

Maurice Leloir in Le Roy-Soleil by Theodore Cahu, 1931

Later he established the first school for ballet and ordered that a performance be inserted after the second act of every opera produced at court.

 The Man with the Iron Mask by R. Wallace with Leonard Dicaprio as Louis (1998) and Le roi danse by G. Corbiau (2000) 

Ritualized dance was part of court life until the end of the Old Regime:

The Princess of Navarre by Nicolin Cochin, 1745 / zoom

# # #

  

The Opéra continued the royal tradition, with a ballet after the second act of every opera. All Degas's dancers were "Opéra girls:" The city had no other ballet.

 Shown at the exhibit Degas at the Opéra at the musée d'Orsay (2019)

Their interludes are the link 
 between court dance and cabaret floor shows, 
which also began in Paris.

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Millionaires and ballerinas

MILLIONAIRES AND BALLERINAS

"KEEPING" A DANCER WAS A SOURCE OF IDENTITY, PRESTIGE AND CREDIT

 "Mr. Leuwen, the wealthy banker who keeps Mademoiselle des Brins, of the Opéra..."

-- Lucien Leuwen by Stendhal, 1834

# # #

The second act over, the subscribers would meet the dancers backstage or in a room specially designed for that purpose, whose idealized image contributed to Paris's reputation for high-end sex:

 Backstage at the Opéra by Jean Béraud, 1889 / City Museum (musée Carnavalet) 

The Foyer de la Danse, courtesy Opéra archives

"It is meant [...] as a setting for the graceful groups of ballerinas [...] one thinks of a kaleidoscope when they intermingle in thousands upon thousands of ways."

 -- Charles Garnier

Degas's point of view:

   Shown in the exhibit Degas à l'Opéra on the centenary of his death, in 2017

Those ballerinas, "the elite of Parisian pleasures:"

-- Splendor and Misery of Courtesans by Balzac (1838-47),

• "...her mother, as I have since learned, to my horror, was a dancer at the Opéra"

-- Said of the adventuress Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray 1848

      Degas monotype, origin unknown

• The expression C'est ma danseuse  ("It's my dancer") means a pastime that absorbs huge resources and gives nothing in return. It harks back to the dancers' exorbitant demands for presents.

.

From humble backgrounds, usually illiterate, they left no records, and we know of them only through men who despised them.

They despised them back. The black choker Degas's dancer wears recalled a dog collar and meant, "We know what you think of us. We don't like you either."  

-- Nadège Maruta, cancan choreographer and historian,

personal communication

• Dancers' and courtisans' revenge : "At every bite, Nana devoured an acre...

She passed [...] like a cloud of locusts [...] she burned the land where she placed her little foot. Farm by farm, prairie by prairie, she bit into the inheritance [...] without even noticing, as she would munch a packet of pralines [...] but one night, all that was left was a little wood. She swallowed it with a look of contempt, for it was not even worth opening her mouth."

-- Nana by Émile Zola, 1880.

# # #

The practice declined when the "Opéra girls" joined a strike of Opéra employees and obtained livable salaries: Subscribers' furious letters show that many then refused their "sponsorship." 

(In 1912)

It ended when the austère Protestant Jacques Rouché became director and ended the abonnés' privileges by financing performances himself.

(In the 1930's)

-- Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, historian of Paris,
personal communication

When Rouché's funds ran out the State took over.

(In 1939)

 

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Next,

Degas's "Little dancer"

DEGAS'S "LITTLE DANCER"

BALLERINAS WENT ON STAGE AGED 13 OR 14, BEGINNING TRAINING AT SIX OR SEVEN: THAT IS HOW THE DEBAUCHERY OF A BALZAC HEROINE BEGINS

(CORALIE IN SPLENDOR AND MISERY OF COURTESANS) 

Their scampering recalled that of rats and they were called "petits rats."

By Degas 

Notice the man on the left and the exchange of glances.

Pedophilia, publicly tolerated

At Palais-Royal, Internet, no further information

"Little dancer, 14 years old:" For Degas, the low forehead and salient jaw were monkey-like signs of degeneration and criminality:

"The vicious muzzle of this young, scarcely adolescent girl, this little flower of the gutter, imprints her face with the detestable promise of every vice."

-- Critic cited in The Painted Girls
 by Cathy Marie Buchanan, 2013, a novel about the model based on fact.

Communards say:
"If you do not want your daughters 
to be instruments of pleasure

 for the aristocracy of wealth, 
workers arise!"

-- Paris Babylon by Rupert Christiansen, 1994

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A ceiling decorated by an orgy

A CEILING DECORATED BY AN ORGY

NYMPHS SEDUCE SATYRS AS BACCHUS* LOOKS ON, IN DECOR THAT COVERS THE FULL CEILING OF THE ABONNÉS' SALON

-- The Fête of Bacchus by Georges Clairin

*God of debauchery

End of this section.

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Next section,
II.7.3.
Blackout?

II.7.3. BLACKOUT?

 2.7.3. MENU: Blackout? 

THE HOMAGE TO TYCOONS IS CAMOUFLAGED WHEN IT'S POSSIBLE, IGNORED WHEN IT ISN'T

 

Pamela Spurdon

In brief

• Tycoons equal to an emperor

• Merch contributes to the transformation, but is not its cause 

• Masking the monument's purpose

• Ignoring the obvious and getting away with it

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Tycoons equal to an emperor

TYCOONS EQUAL TO AN EMPEROR

EXCEPT FOR THE MESSAGE ON THE FACADE THE ROTUNDA AND VOIDS ARE TWINS, ON THE CITY'S MOST EXPENSIVE LAND

      Claude Abron

The difference is in the two entrances, both of which are surrounded by voids and female figures:

• The voids

• At the Emperor's entrance a ramp for horses sets the site a apart. 

• At that of the subscribers, a colonnade of female nudes surrounds the empty space. 

• The female figures :

•  For the Emperor, a pair of caryatids clothed by layers of drapery underscore his entrance.

• For the abonnés, the colonnade of 14 nudes subtly radiated sensuality* until its restoration (in 2016). 

*Nudity is the clothing of gods. In official art the idealized bodies represent the Republic, Justice etc. and as cold abstractions, do not incite desire. There are no other examples of sensual nudes on buildings of the time, except, perhaps, for Carpeaux's lifelike female nude in the group La Danse on the Opéra's facade.

Before restoration (in 2016)  / Félix Sinpraseuth

"Coming, honey?" / Alex Varenne

That colonnade alludes to the ballerinas and highlights the void's immensity.

Roland Halbe-Yatzer

Lit by the caryatids' lanterns 

the abonnés strolled toward their entrance,

feeling themselves masters of the universe.

That is the original point of the edifice.

Renovation begun in 2011 has made it

almost impossible to perceive.

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Next,

   Merch contributes to the transformation,

but is not its cause 

MERCH CONTRIBUTES TO THE TRANSFORMATION, BUT IS NOT ITS CAUSE

RENOVATION LEADS TO PASSING THROUGH THREE LEVELS OF BOUTIQUES TO REACH THE EXIT

 Commerce also makes hiding a third 

of the spectacular void by a restaurant,

but it does not explain asepticizing the statues

or changing the exit.

Please click on.

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Next,

Masking the monument's purpose 

MASKING THE MONUMENT'S PURPOSE

THE HOMAGE TO MAGNATES IS CAMOUFLAGED OR IGNORED

Their entrance has almost vanished:

(Since 2011)

The arrow might show its location, though I recall a very simple door that was always closed, at the rear of the huge space empty except for an official's car. I did not think of taking a picture. The change took place in 2011.

The restored statues are hard, slick and cold rather than almost palpable. 

# # #

How mask the vast space where the abonnés left their carriages and that underscored their entrance? Two-thirds of the space is neutralized...

• The northern section is hidden until late afternoon because the light is in one's eyes. One sees the colonnade and does not think of the void: 

• The center is a restaurant terrace. Tables and parasols divide its immensity while greenery and a barrier separate it from the street:

Passers-by do not notice it:

# # #

But the last third is too big to hide. Empty, it stands out.* Changing the exit masks the space from visitors leaving the building:

*For a short time tables and parasols occupied the full space, but many more clients would have been needed to fill it. So it is empty.

• They used to leave by a vast glass portal, descended a staircase that was short but wide, walked through the whole space and left with a sense of majesty.

The pothole shows disregard for the past and the belief that since visitors now have their backs to it as they leave, it will pass unnoticed. 

 

• The current dark exit, built toward 2020, leads directly to the street. Because its smaller size is easier to guard from theft of wares from the boutiques visitors have just passed through? (Please read on.) On the contrary: When half closed the earlier glass portal was of the same size and its luminosity favored control.

This new exit is another example of a detail that seems to have little importance, yet throws light on what counts most.

# # # 

 

But about observant passers-by 

there is nothing to be done. 

This photo was not posed

and the onlooker seems to wonder

what is the reason for the huge space,

empty except for the pothole.

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Next,

Ignoring the obvious and getting away with it