The Phantom History of Opéra Garnier
People's Daily Paris
Paris’s Opéra Garnier, as pretty as the postcard above, like a jewel box in a glossy 19th Century wonderland, inviting those who wander up Avenue de l’Opéra or along Boulevard des Capuchins to some fairy tale adventure. Indeed who can resist ? It gets even better when you’re inside, whether you’re taking in the scene from a box
or seeing things from the stage. Enchanted is the word, no ?
Paris already had numerous large theatres and opera houses. Opera was the premier popular art of the time, patronized by both the bourgeois and the working classes. To know the passions the genre aroused, look at New York and the Opera riots - witnessed by the poet Walt Whitman - near what is now Cooper Union in Lower Manhattan. So why the Garnier ?
The Opéra Garnier owes its existence to a savage act of violence with international repercussions.