Paris Opera

    Anyone familiar with a large opera house would testify that it is an extraordinary labyrinth of people and passageways, but the Paris Opera House of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in which Gaston Leroux set The Phantom of the Opera, was remarkable by any standards. It was a hotbed of politics and factions. From prima donna to stage-hand, the Opera House was governed by intrigue and rumor; everyone jostling for position, defending their own territory and scrabbling for new. At the time in which the novel is set, the Opera House boasted over fifteen hundred employees and had its own stables of white horses for the opera troupe underneath the forecourt. Even today, it employs over a thousand people and contains two permanent ballet schools within the building.

    Built between 1862 and 1875 by Charles Garnier, the Paris opera is a baroque example of neoclassicism: It has an ornamented facade, monumental stairs and Italian type hall with Chagall paintings on the ceiling. Maria Callas and Rudolf Noureev are among the many artists who wrote its history as one of the world foremost scenic stages for opera and ballet alike. Since the opening of the Opera Bastille in 1989, the Opera Garnier is devoted to ballets.