Sunday, June 22, 2008

0806212300 The Palace Garnier - Where the Phantom of the Opera lives.

0806 The Phantom of the Opera.
The Opera House is gorgeous. The architect not only had style, but also a sense of humour. There were only a few little touches that made the Palace Garnier really special. He understood the opera and why people attended the opera - the social occasion. The opera house is roughly divided into three equal sections: The entrance, the auditorium and the stage. A decent sized third of the building space is dedicated to the customers. Every night at the opera was an occasion to socialise and been seen.
The entrance foyer is round and surrouned by mirrors. The guests would watch each other in the mirrors and talk and gossip. On the centre of the ceiling the architect, Mr Garnier, had his name inscribed hidden within the decoration - the patrons. that is the wealthy and the royalty of France would notice some writing and try to decifer what was hidden. They would call their friends over and soon a gaggle of princes or a brood of princesses would be all together searching for the hidden message. This made the name of Mr Garnier famous as the architect. The opera house was soon known as the Palace Garnier.
The Grand Staircase was designed so that the esteemed guests did not merely enter, but made an entrance. The stairs are surrounded by three levels of balconies from which they could be seen arriving as they made their way up the grand staircase to the auditorium.
Every square millimetre of wall, floor and ceiling is decoration. I can understand the use of gold as a protective coating. It is waterproof, it does not rust nor does it require painting or regular polishing. One of the other less practical advantages of using gold is that it makes a palace look expensive - and in the Palace Garnier, they spared no expense to give the impression that no expense was spared.
The Palace Garnier is the setting for the Phantom of the Opera. Here is the famous box number five from where the Phantom watches Christine.
The tour guide asked if anyone would like to see if the Phantom was in there - Hugo bravely stepped up and pressed his face to glass. I wondered if they had positioned a mannequin in there or something equally scary. The tension mounted as Hugo peered through the little round window. Silence. Hugo then announced there is no Phantom.
Here is a view of inside box number five.


The days of royalty and aristocrats arriving in flowing gowns amid the swirling spectacle of opening night are gone, however our French tour guide says that the closest that the Palace Garnier gets to its grand old days is when the French university engineering department have their annual dinner. The men are dressed in their finest suits and the intermission foyer comes alive with the formal pageantry of an age that has past. The young engineers attend an opera and are then escorted to a banquette. After the dinner and the presentation of their degrees they continue the graduation with ballroom dancing in the intermission foyer accompanied by an orchestra.

The theme of this has in the past been loosley tied to learning to speak Cantonese - but I digress momentarily while I learn to speak French.
It is a mystery to my tiny little mind why some sounds are easier to remember in French than the same sound in Cantonese. Why is "Nei Ho Ma" harder to remember than "Bon Jour"?
For example, I lived in Hong Kong for five months before I could speak enough Cantonese so that when I went to shops I would, at least appear to be polite - simple phrases - Hello how are you?, Good morning, Just these few things today, Do you accept electronic transfers? - that sort of conversation. I arrived in France on Monday afternoon and I have picked up enough of the language to buy groceries in French.
The first conversation with the local Boulongier went like this:
Me - Bon Jour Boulongier.
Boulongier - Bon Souir.
It seems that I had bid our local Boulongier a good day when it would have been more appropriate to bid him a good evening. One of the first rules in learning to speak another language is to have confidence. It can be embarrassing to say something stupid and even more so to say something stupid in another language. The worst thing is when I say something stupid and embarrassing and not even know it. Well it seems that I said something stupid and I stood there in front of our friendly French Boulongier looking like a stupid English speaking foreigner and I started to feel embarrassed. I suddenly remembered that Rachel Ruby said that my French sounded too Russian. Carolyn has also said that my French should flow like liquid, while Russian explodes with heavy emphasis on the second syllable. So I corrected myself in Russian.
Me - Dobre Veechere Tovarishch. ( Good evening friend )
Boulongier - Ahh - I don’t speak Russian, and you, it seems cannot speak French, can we both speak English?
Me - Da, I would like two baguettes please - Merci bo coo Boulongier.

Here are few photos of the “Hugo Fountains” of Paris.

2 comments:

  1. David your blog is "magnifique", or should I say это хорошо!!

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  2. Absolutly incredible! Very insightful. Parts of the opera I've never seen pictures of! Thank you... The Phantom Rocks!!! ^ ^

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