-Thriller at the Opera-

Ah, what a lovely afternoon excursion to the Opera Garnier.  The Paris weather has been playing me for a fool again, as I stepped jacket-less from the metro and into another overcast, windy day.  You see, it was sunny when I entered the metro.  Fortunately, I was distracted by the high school boys with their boombox, popping and locking to the late Mr. Jackson's Thriller.  French kids don't have school on Wednesdays (but they do for part of Saturday) so the Opera stairs were covered with them, eating lunch, gossiping in French, and whatever else Parisian students do in their free time on the steps of famous buildings.  As you can see, I preferred the fancy steps inside.

A large portion of the building's exterior is currently covered in scaffolding because of restoration work, but there were still enough statues, paintings, frescos, gilding, and other decorations to fill our afternoon.  The Opera Garnier (named for its architect Charles Garnier), was started in1862, but wasn't finished until 1874.  It is also called the Palais Garnier (palace) because it is so extravagantly decorated. 

The dancers outside aren't the only ones to be inspired by this grand building: the water under the site which had to be removed before construction, and a falling chandelier which killed one person inspired Gaston Leroux to pen The Phantom of the Opera.  We even got to tour the secret underground passages and lake...I'm just kidding, there's no such thing.  I think.

Chagall's Opera Ceiling

It is stunning to see how much detail went into every piece of this.  The shear amount of detail is incredible.  One of my favourite was the ceiling painting in the actual theatre room.  It was redone by Marc Chagall, who if you remember my posts from the Alsace weekend, also redid a set of stained-glass windows for the Notre Dame de Reims.  His modern painting style clashed a little more with this elaborate decore than his colourful windows did in Reims, and apparently having him repaint over the original ceiling art caused some controversy.  Which is why I will be further researching this issue of updating old art and architecture with modern elements, instead of refurbishing or trying to recreate the old style, in my required paper for my Paris Civilization and Culture class.  If anyone is really reading my blog, maybe I'll post it when it's written (though I promise that won't be anytime soon).

Post-Opera (ha-that's almost like post-op...) Kelly, Neena, and I stopped for a pastry and I almost broke out in the Thriller dance myself, I was so excited to see a rhubarb tarte.  Ah, Paris is delicious.