Opéra National de Paris - Palais Garnier, Paris, France
"If Music Is the Architect . . .,
The New York Times,
Edward Rothstein, May 22, 2004
After Charles Garnier designed the Paris Opera in the 1870's, he called acoustics a ''bizarre science.''
''Nowhere did I find a positive rule to guide me,'' he wrote. ''I must explain that I have adopted no principle, that my plan has been based on no theory, and that I leave success or failure to chance alone.'' He compared the acoustician to an acrobat ''who closes his eyes and clings to the ropes of an ascending balloon.''" - https://shorturl.at/avGS6
"From HiSoUR - https://shorturl.at/cvAL8
The auditorium has a traditional Italian horseshoe shape and can seat 1,979. The stage is the largest in Europe and can accommodate as many as 450 artists. The canvas house curtain was painted to represent a draped curtain, complete with tassels and braid.
In the tradition of Italian theaters, the French-style horseshoe-shaped performance hall, because of the seating arrangement according to category, was designed to see and be seen. Its metal structure, masked by marble, stucco, velvet and gilding, supports the 8 tons weighing bronze and crystal chandelier equipped with 340 lights.
...
Located exactly above the vault of the former rotunda of subscribers, the large auditorium is the heart of the palace.
In a horseshoe shape, with four balconies, lodges and five-storey stalls, the place is designed according to the model of Italian theater where visibility is variable. Its dimensional characteristics are impressive: nearly thirty-one meters wide, thirty-two meters deep and twenty meters high. His gauge is approaching two thousand seats, with a little more than one thousand nine hundred seats. This place is dressed in dominant tones of reds and golds.
The ceiling area which surrounds the chandelier was originally painted by Jules Eugène Lenepveu. In 1964 a new ceiling painted by Marc Chagall was installed on a removable frame over the original. It depicts scenes from operas by 14 composers – Mussorgsky, Mozart, Wagner, Berlioz, Rameau, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Adam, Bizet, Verdi, Beethoven, and Gluck. Although praised by some, others feel Chagall’s work creates “a false note in Garnier’s carefully orchestrated interior.”
...
The lodges
The boxes and backs, and their seats and benches are dressed in velvet and their partitions, damask and hangings. All the furnishing materials have a subtle play of crimson shades. The most famous and mysterious lodge has a gateway where (since 2011) is a bronze plaque indicating “Lodge of the Phantom of the Opera”; it is located at the level of the first lodges. This famous box bears the no. 5 proscenium lodges overlook the orchestra pit in the arc Doubleau forming the proscenium." - https://shorturl.at/cvAL8
