If there's one thing I love about travelling on my own (sorry Donkey, but I'm not sure how handy you'd be in, say, a knife fight!...) is that I have to get outside my comfort zone!!! And for me, that's catching the Metro ... it's one thing I've always managed to avoid in the past, but today (Saturday) I decided it's time to face my unfounded & quite frankly, ridiculous, fear of catching the Metro!! I think it stems back to that movie, Paris je t'aime ... there's a scene with Steve Buscemi & this couple in the Metro and it all goes wrong ... anyway, the short story is, I caught the Metro today! (yay for me ... wild applause from the crowd ... hey! I have a plastic donkey as a travelling companion...) Clearly I have lived to tell the tale. And the Palais Garnier (the Paris Opera house) was my destination.
Designed by, and named after (one of the few structures in Paris to be so) Charles Garnier, they started building this impressive Opera House in 1861. It took about 14 years to be completed. There is even a separate entry on the West side of the building for the Emperor, designed so that his carriage could drive straight in without being seen by the public - this elaborate entrance (in practical design only, the actual aesthetic of this wing is incredibly bare, "behind the scenes" so to speak) was to avoid any assassination attempts. Ironically, the Emperor never actually came to the building!
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| Our tour guide at the stairs of the Emperor's Entrance |
The rest of the Opera is AMAZING! Ornate to the MAX! This was Garnier's intention ... in those days, everyone expected the building to be pretty bland because, well, all the action happened on the stage! C'mon!! Garnier wanted to bring some of that action to the people too, so he created a building that encouraged "peacocking". People, women in particular, were finding themselves leaving their seats at interval to be "seen" by fellow Opera goers, rather than staying in their boxes (which were specifically designed to accommodate the voluminous female garments of the day) - they wanted to be able to view the beauty of the artwork, but also be admired too! (our tour guide was very informative!).
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| Everything's curved to create the illusion of movement! |
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| One of the Boxes |
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| The Grand Gallery (you can rent this space out for 50,000 Euro a night (and that's JUST the space!) |
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| Marc Chagall's ceiling |
And while it's called the Opera House, the majority of performances are Ballets - it's always been that way, apparently. The Ballet School was housed on the premises for many years - but it's now in a new purpose-built building in one of Paris's suburbs. Palais Garnier is still the home of Ballet tho. We actually got to watch one of the ballet dancers practicing while we were checking out the the stage and ceiling (there are actually two ceilings - the original and the one we see today, which was commissioned by Georges Pompidou, while he was Minister for the Arts, and painted (for free) by Marc Chagall in the 1960's. There is a plastic covering over the original, and a special air conditioning system which protects it - so at any time, a new government could decide they didn't like the Chagall (which is in 26 panels) & have the old ceiling reinstated).
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Marc Chagall's self-portrait - next to the top right
of the Eiffel Tower (no pokey little corner for him!!) |
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Swan Lake
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| The original ceiling |
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| This reminded me of a production of The Mikado I did at Uni! |
And yes, there is a large pool of water under the building, but no it's not an actual lake (it's part of what was once the Seine); the chandelier never fell, but one of its counter-weights did and landed on an unfortunate woman in Box #5, seat 13; and the "Phantom" was an employee who was disfigured at birth and his living quarters were under the building ... sorry to burst any bubbles!
While I was so close, I thought I'd drop into Galleries Lafayette and Printemps ... HUGE mistake! They're having a mid-season sale ... Oh My God. It was INSANE!! I loved it!!!! I was hoping some of the ludicrous amount of wealth walking the floors would rub off on me ... I'll keep trying!!!
So, anyway, with all good intentions of catching the Metro home again ... one wrong turn leads to another and I ended up at a wonderful little Gallery of old ... Gallerie Vivienne ... much more my pace of shopping. Sane. More of that beautiful architecture and decoration ...
And then, I discovered a wonderful little bakery ... Le Moulin de la Vierge (Mill of the Virgin) ... where they still use wood-fired ovens & organic flour to bake all their bread.
... then I was so far from my Metro station, I walked home (it was only about 4kms)! ... some of the things I got to see ...
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| I love this ... a "modern" pharmacy in such an Art Deco building! |
While I was so close, I thought I'd drop into Galleries Lafayette and Printemps ... HUGE mistake! They're having a mid-season sale ... Oh My God. It was INSANE!! I loved it!!!! I was hoping some of the ludicrous amount of wealth walking the floors would rub off on me ... I'll keep trying!!!
