We take it for a big cherry designed to crown the majestic and long cake that is the avenue de l’Opéra; for a heavy, bloated building parodying old models; for the place of anchorage of the social elite. These are some of the reproaches, beliefs and sometimes just criticisms that the lyric theater designed by Charles Garnier (1825-1898) attracts.
But the Palais Garnier, built over a period of fifteen years, was decided before the drilling ordered by Napoleon III to Baron Georges Haussmann, prefect of Paris, of the avenue which connects it to the Tuileries Palace – on a crooked, cramped ground and in a neighborhood that was nothing shiny. If it testifies, in many points, to references and reverences to previous buildings, the new lyrical institution wanted by the Emperor is a prodigy of technicality and ingenious pretenses: behind the cut stone, under its dome and its balconies are organized in a vast network of steel structures, a technology of mastery then still recent.
Finally, commissioned as a jewel intended to arouse curiosity, admiration, jealousies and international imitations, the building will be received by the Third Republic, which will gladly endorse the theatricality of this place of sociability, designed for the elites of the Second Empire, for its worldly representation, as – if not more – important than the lyrical performances it hosts. Things have not changed that much, even if the Opéra Bastille, inaugurated in 1989, on the occasion of the commemorations of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, offers a facade that is intended to be popular.
A lover of Italy
The vast documentary Un opéra pour un empire, by Patrick Cabouat and Stéphane Landowski, returns in a serious way (from the point of view of its documentation) and entertaining (that of its production) to the long history of the Palais Garnier, whose construction was delayed by many incidents and setbacks – not the least of which was the fall of the Second Empire. Amended by many art and music historians, with provided but clear statements, by photographs taken throughout the construction of the new opera – before its fire, in 1873, the official Parisian opera hall was Not far away, on rue Le Peletier – Un opéra pour un empire seduces with its skilful cocktail of significant anecdotes and instructive information.
He also decided to present Charles Garnier in more interesting ways than those commonly bequeathed by his reputation as the official artist of the Second Empire. This lover of Italy, former Grand Prix de Rome for architecture, had succeeded in inspiring and unifying around him an interdisciplinary workshop made up of members “as passionate as they are crazy”, as historian Alice Thomine-Berrada describes them. .
We have sufficiently denounced the abuse of reconstructed scenes in documentaries not to salute the fluidity with which those shot for Un opéra pour un empire are integrated into the general theme. We just regret the short and sudden final release on the cinema, which does not convince and seems to give a wobbly appearance to a set that is nevertheless remarkably balanced.