Its spectacular facade, its monumental marble staircase, its large foyer that looks like a Hall of Mirrors: 150 years after its inauguration, the Palais Garnier in Paris continues to impress.
Five things to know about this emblematic building as the Paris Opera organizes a series of events in 2025 to mark the anniversary, including an exceptional gala on January 24:
Anti-attack operation
Paris Opera has rhymed, for a century and a half, with Palais Garnier. But this institution, founded in 1669, initially wandered from room to room, changing its Parisian address 11 times in 200 years.
On January 14, 1858, Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie miraculously escaped a bomb attack as their procession arrived at the opera, at the time located in the narrow rue Le Peletier.
The emperor decided to build a new opera house with clear surroundings to discourage future violent actions. It will be the Opéra Garnier, enthroned alone on its urban island at the end of the vast avenue de l’Opéra, specially opened by Baron Haussmann at the request of Napoleon III.
The Le Peletier Opera was completely destroyed by a fire in 1873, a disaster which accelerated the completion of the Palais Garnier.
Quickly electric
Paris Opera ballet dancer in the grand foyer of the Palais Garnier on September 19, 2015 / FRANCOIS GUILLOT / AFP/Archives
On January 5, 1875, the impressive building designed by architect Charles Garnier was inaugurated with pomp. All of Paris jostles there under the glare of thousands of gas burners. The emerging electricity is not yet considered reliable enough to equip the entire building.
But from 1881, the 340 gas burners of the theater’s large chandelier were replaced by electric bulbs. The Opéra Garnier is one of the first Parisian buildings to benefit from a complete electrical installation.
The neighboring Avenue de l’Opéra was also the first Parisian artery to experiment with electric public lighting in 1878.
Balcony and ceiling painters
The ceiling painted by Marc Chagall in the Palais Garnier theater on January 6, 2005 / Gabriel BOUYS / AFP/Archives
The Paris Opera is not just a place of music and dance. It is also a privileged setting for painters. Edgar Degas spent a good part of his artistic life representing, in hundreds of works, dancers, singers, musicians, fans behind the scenes.
The painter assiduously attended the Opéra Le Peletier then the Opéra Garnier, preferring the relative sobriety of the first to the decorative overload of the second.
Known fact: Marc Chagall created, in 1964, at the request of the Minister of Culture André Malraux, the paintings which adorn the dome of the theater. It is less known that the original decoration, due to the academic painter Jules-Eugène Lenepveu, remains intact under Chagall’s panels.
Some are campaigning for them to be dismantled, at least temporarily, to make Lenepveu’s ceiling visible again.
21 reminders for Maria Callas
Maria Callas during a rehearsal of “Tosca” at the Paris Opera on February 18, 1965 / – / AFP/Archives
Maria Callas triumphed, for the first time, at the Paris Opera, on December 19, 1958, with a unique recital broadcast on television, in front of an audience of celebrities including Charlie Chaplin and Brigitte Bardot.
The « Divine » performed again on the Garnier stage in 1964 and 1965. On February 20, 1965, the AFP described the diva’s triumph: “Twenty-one encores this evening greeted Maria Callas who performed + La Tosca + for the first time at the Opera. From the orchestra to the amphitheater (…), the applause crackled, the fans chanting +Cal-as, Cal-as+ while a shower of bouquets continued to fall on the stage..
Rockstar you ballet
Rudolf Nureyev in the ballet “Raymonda” at the Paris Opera on November 4, 1983 / PHILIPPE WOJAZER / AFP/Archives
Twenty years after his legendary visit to the West at Le Bourget airport, escaping KGB agents while he was on tour, Rudolf Nureyev was appointed director of the Paris Opera ballet in September 1983. by Culture Minister Jack Lang.
For his first season at Garnier, Nureyev chooses to stage and dance the famous Russian ballet “Raymonda”. The Soviet agency Tass welcomes the spectacle which “enriches the repertoire of Parisian theater” but makes no mention of the defector dancer.
This « rockstar du ballet » –compliment of ex-dancer Manuel Legris, himself named star dancer by Nureyev in 1986– was cut down on January 6, 1993 by AIDS. Uniquely, his remains are honored in the Garnier enclosure, his coffin carried up the monumental staircase by six of his former star dancers.