The Palais Garnier is gorgeous, ornate, sublime, truly palatial. Today the Palais Garnier is used mostly for ballet productions. It’s not the Paris Ballet, it’s the Paris Opera Ballet, and both the opera and the ballet have performed at the Palais Garnier until 1989, when a second opera house was built (the Opéra Bastille, with more elaborate facilities for the sort of set and production changes required for opera). (And for many years, only men were allowed to dance.) This is why now, particularly in Europe, the term “opera” is tied in with the country’s premier dance companies. This is why all the ballet terms are in French and not Italian.īack in those times, ballet companies were merely offshoots of the far more important opera companies and their performances. Louis XIV gave the ballet all his support, both personal and financial, and as such, ballet thrived in France. By 1672 it was The Royal Academy of Music, to be later known as simply The Opera. He founded the Royal Academy of Dance in 1661, and in 1669, the Academy of Opera.
Although ballet in some form had commenced centuries earlier in Italy, it was France’s Louis XIV, himself a dancer, who developed it.
And for the next best thing, the chance to see the venue where the POB performs, wander the fabled halls, the glittering, mirror-and-chandelier-filled salon, run my fingers lovingly over one of the red velvet seats in the auditorium, gaze upward at the Marc Chagall ceiling, it would be well worth ten euros.Īny of my ballet readers will be nodding their heads wisely at the mention of the Paris Opera Ballet, knowing its stellar international reputation, its legendary hold within the dance world since way back. So, I was in the neighborhood of Paris’s Palais Garnier the other day-you know how that goes, just a weekday drop-by on a free afternoon-and I decided to invest in the 10 euro price to tour the opera house and its museum, since odds are low I’ll be attending a performance of the Paris Opera Ballet there any time in the future.
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