This superb example of Beaux Arts neoclassical Opera House was inaugurated on this day, 5 January, in 1875.
Charles Garnier’s design is splendid, even more so when one appreciates that it was despised and detested by that box-building fraud Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (aka Le Corbusier).
The Varnished Culture has only seen one production there, but it was well worth it: Kata Kabanova. Such a bleak and shabby piece may have seemed incongruous but your correspondent, amid Parisian dowagers rattling their jewelry, was untroubled by the surrounding sumptuousness.
The decorative figures adorning the main façade include bronze busts of Mozart (check), Rossini (check) and Beethoven (one of the very greatest, but one opera only?) and no Wagner. The Maestro would be pained to notice that his bête noire, Meyerbeer, gets a guernsey.
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