The history of the Paris Opera House that I have researched revealed five
interesting topics. First, an attempted assassination of Napoleon III and
the Empress Eugene took place as their carriage passed through the rue Lepeletier
after an evening at the Opera. The incident prompted the Emperor to offer
a competition to design a new opera house. In 1860, Charles Garnier entered
the design contest called the Ministry of Fine Arts and won. The construction
of the Opera House was funded by the state. Due to many unforeseen problems
and the Franco Prussian war, the construction stopped in 1870. After the
war, the working class occupied the unfinished opera house and used it as
a warehouse, observation post, communications center, military post and
a powder store. The project was finally finished in 1875, fourteen years
later. When the emperor and empress were presented with the model, they
asked "What is this style? It's not a style. It's not Greek, it's not Louis
XVI." Charles Garnier was noted to have replied, "No, those styles have
had their day. This style is Napoleon III, and you complain?"
Second, Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux, a writer, was moved by the grand architecture of the Opera House. With permission, Leroux explored the outer parts, including the cellar which at one time was used as a torture chamber, the basement which gave him access to the underground lake and many hidden passages.
When the Opera House was finished, it was one of the largest venues in
the world. The stage was built with 118,404 square feet, 11,000 in square
meters, that allowed space for 450 players. It was 185 feet high, 568
feet long, and 333 feet wide. The main chandelier weighed six and a half
tons. It took 13 painters, 73 sculptors, and 14 plasterers and stucco
specialists to complete the artwork. The Opera's cellar was built on top
of an underground lake and stream.
An unexpected accident occurred in 1896 in the Paris Opera House. One
of the counterweights of the chandelier fell from the ceiling killing
one opera patron. This event sparked Leroux's imagination and inspired
him to write the novel, the Phantom of the Opera.
The Phantom of the Opera is a popular horror romance that describes the
end of a ghost's love story. In Leroux's novel, he claimed the ghost did
exist and was not based on his imagination. The first Phantom of the Opera
was published in 1910 and the first film premier took place in the San
Francisco Curran Theatre in 1925.
Third, Claude Debussy was quoted as saying, "To the uninformed passer
by", the Opera looks like a railway station...inside one might be
forgiven for thinking it was the central lounge of a Turkish bath."
Fourth, in 1875, the opening night of the Opera consisted of pieces from
the dead. The pieces included overtures by Rossini and Auber. This program
was designed to avoid offending living composers.
Fifth, a bit of trivia regarding German history. German writers did not
have copyright protection. In 1842, Hambury Stadttheater attempted to
introduce a system of royalties. Next year, Meyerbeer managed to set up
a system at the Berlin Opera which allowed authors to receive .10 cents
off the performance ticket. Music prose were being sold from 500 to 2000
francs. For example, Leon Pillet, director of the Paris Grand Opera paid
500 francs for the prose works of the Hollander, while Lachner paid Henri
de Saint-Georges 2,000 francs for the Catarina Cornaro.
I hope I have given interesting examples of the History of the Paris Opera
House.