Detail View: Archivision Base to Module 9: Paris Opéra

Preferred Title: 
Paris Opéra
Alternate Title: 
Palais Garnier
Image View: 
Secondary stairs, west side
Creator: 
Charles Garnier (French architect, 1825-1898)
Location: 
site: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Date: 
1860-1874 (creation)
Cultural Context: 
French
Style Period: 
Baroque Revival; Beaux-Arts; Second Empire
Work Type 1: 
opera house
Classification: 
architecture
Material: 
stone; marble
Technique: 
carving (processes); construction (assembling)
Inscription: 
"Académie Nationale de Musique" on the facade.
Subjects: 
architectural exteriors; music; Performing arts; interior; stair
Description: 
The ceiling area, which surrounds the chandelier, was given a new painting in 1964 by Marc Chagall. "Garnier had the idea of constructing the different parts of the building (the foyer, the auditorium and the fly) in distinct masses and decided to arrange them in tiers in such a way that the perspective varied in depth, gradually increasing the concentration on the façade...Garnier set out the low volume of the foyer in a very emphatic manner, as he did the auditorium and the immense gabled fly tower, which was of an impressive height: more than 60 m high, or three times the height of Parisian buildings at that time. The heart of the building is the great stairway. This colossal, brightly lit and multicoloured space, with its imperial flights of stairs with bronze statues and marble columns, culminates in the ivory caryatids at the entry to the theatre boxes. The progression of effects is spectacular and makes the Opéra the most exuberant building of its time and the most characteristic of the Second Empire,
Collection: 
Archivision Addition Module One
Identifier: 
1A1-GJ-O-2-E6
Rights: 
© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.