Day one in Paris, and the first thing on the list is go and have coffee -lots of it but in tiny cups. I walked through the streets like they were rivers of molasses and my brain was a cabbage. I got lost walking in a straight line. I walked past dozens of delightful Parisian cafes and shamefully ended up at Starbucks were I suffer through the most revolting coffee ever brewed. I forget the PIN to my credit card. I spoke French like a 2 year old but my brain was working like a senile 80 yr old. Jet lag – it still surprises me how debilitating it is.
After a deep and lengthy nap I tackled Paris again with a bit more of a spring in my step. This time I headed off to the Paris Opera for a spot of trout fishing and some honey. This building is of great interest to me not simply because its a masterpiece of Neo Baroque architecture which of course thrills me to bits, but for what lies underneath and between its walls. The building was constructed on swampy ground and a subterranean lake welled up in the basement. So you may already know that this fact, along with the death-by-chandelier of a patron, inspired the gothic novel ‘The Phantom of the Opera’. What you might not know is that one of the caretakers took advantage of this lake by turning it into a trout farm. Also during his years there a firewarden for the building mentioned to him that he was having problems with bees in the building, so the entrepreneurial caretaker suggested building hives on the roof to take advantage of these pesky creatures. It reminds me a little of my studio building which for months and months bled honey from the walls.
Unfortunately, the trout and the bees aren’t part of the public tour so you have to make do with looking at things like this instead…
What this image, the wafer thin tour brochure, and my limited writing capacity can’t convey however, is the experiential wonder of being physically immersed in the opulence of a place like this. Here are some of the things I noticed:
· The gold work is luminous, its not just the colour of gold it’s has the reflective sheen of the metal and reflects a rich light through the space.
· Dust settles in the low relief stonework, and I was tempted to do a little sweeping.
· The marble and mosaic floors are uneven underfoot and bare witness to hundreds of years of people walking across the foyer and up the grand staircase.
· The universal sound of sighing, oh-ing and ah-ing as each visitor enters
Prior to arriving in Paris I brought a ticket to see Verdi’s ‘Luisa Miller’ opera and had fantasy’s of swanning around the grand staircase in my chiffon gown and fur stole with a glass of champagne during intermission, and gazing up at the Chagall ceiling during the performance.
However, much to my dismay I realised that my ticket was for the Opera Bastille, which is on the other side of town in a controversial modern building. Oh well I thought, it’s still the Paris Opera and I didn’t bring my chiffon gown and fur anyway so I’ll begrudgingly went.
To my utter amazement the Opera Bastille, which fairly banal looking curved glass building on the outside, is breathtaking on the inside. The glass wall provides you with a 180 degree view of Paris. Through the pink haze of a winter twilight you look across the rootops to Sacre Coeur, the Pompidou Center, the top of the Saint Chapel spire and of course…. the Effiel tower.
As for the Opera… it was a lullaby to my jetlag and so I slept through it.
