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47-638: The Salle Le Peletier or Lepeletier (sometimes referred to as the Salle de la rue Le Peletier or the Opéra Le Peletier ) was the home of the Paris Opera from 1821 until the building was destroyed by fire in 1873. The theatre was designed and constructed by the architect François Debret on the site of the garden of the Hôtel de Choiseul on the rue Lepeletier. Due to the many changes in government and management during

94-519: A royal academy or a public theater. In 1666 he proposed to the minister Colbert that "the king decree 'the establishment of an Academy of Poetry and Music' whose goal would be to synthesize the French language and French music into an entirely new lyric form." Even though Perrin's original concept was of an academy devoted to discussions of French opera, the king's intention was in fact a unique hybrid of royal academy and public theatre, with an emphasis on

141-575: A second theatre at a more prominent location for the Parisian Opera and Ballet based on the design of architect Charles Garnier . In 1875, the new theatre, today known as the Palais Garnier , was inaugurated. Operas Ballets 48°52′23″N 02°20′20″E  /  48.87306°N 2.33889°E  / 48.87306; 2.33889 Paris Opera The Paris Opera ( French : Opéra de Paris , IPA: [opeʁa də paʁi] )

188-513: A total audience of about 800,000 people (of whom 17% come from abroad), with an average seat occupancy rate of 94%. In the 2012–2013 season, the Paris Opera presented 18 opera titles (two in a double bill), 13 ballets, 5 symphonic concerts and two vocal recitals, plus 15 other programmes. The company's training bodies are also active, with 7 concerts from the Atelier Lyrique and 4 programmes from

235-402: Is in the order of 200 million euros, of which €100M come from the French state and €70M from box office receipts. With this money, the company runs the two houses and supports a large permanent staff, which includes the orchestra of 170, a chorus of 110 and the corps de ballet of 150. Each year, the Paris Opera presents about 380 performances of opera, ballet and other concerts, to

282-676: Is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra , and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the Académie Royale de Musique , but continued to be known more simply as the Opéra . Classical ballet as it is known today arose within the Paris Opera as the Paris Opera Ballet and has remained an integral and important part of

329-421: Is watched with a web browser : Google Chrome , Firefox , Microsoft Edge Chromium , and Safari are supported. Subtitles in French and English are available for most videos. To watch videos on a TV , one can use Chromecast or AirPlay ; however the latter does not support subtitles. An alternative method, which supports subtitles, is to play the video on a computer connected to a TV with an HDMI cable . In

376-544: The Académie Royale de Danse , intended to codify court and character dances and to certify dance teachers by examination. From 1680 until Lully's death, it was under the direction of the great dancing master Pierre Beauchamp , the man who codified the five positions of the feet . When Lully took over the Opéra in 1672, he and Beauchamp made theatrical ballet an important part of the company's productions. The ballet of that time

423-688: The French Revolution and the founding of the Republic , the company changed names several times, dropping its association with the royal family (see the List of official company names for details), and in 1794, moved into the Théâtre National de la rue de la Loi (capacity 2800) where it took the name Théâtre des Arts. In 1797, it was renamed the Théâtre de la République et des Arts. Napoleon took control of

470-504: The list of compositions by Jean-Baptiste Lully ). After Lully died (in 1687), the number of new works per year almost doubled, since his successors ( Pascal Collasse , Henri Desmarets , André Campra , André Cardinal Destouches , and Marin Marais ) had greater difficulty sustaining the interest of the public. Revivals of Lully's works were common. French composers at the Opéra generally wrote music to new librettos, which had to be approved by

517-402: The romantic ballet , with such Balletmasters as Jules Perrot , Arthur Saint-Léon , Filippo Taglioni , Joseph Mazilier , Jean Coralli , and Paul Taglioni staging many masterworks for the Paris Opera Ballet . Among these works: La Sylphide (1832), Giselle (1841), Paquita (1846), Le corsaire (1856), Le papillon (1860), La source (1866), and Coppélia (1870). Among

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564-826: The Académie d'Opéra), and no longer needed the theatre built by Richelieu at his residence the Palais-Royal , near the Louvre . (In 1680 the troupe at the Guénégaud merged again with the players from the Hôtel de Bourgogne forming the Comédie-Française .) Richelieu's theatre had been designed by Jacques Le Mercier and had opened in 1641, and unlike the huge theatre at the Tuileries Palace , which could accommodate 6,000 to 8,000 spectators,

611-643: The Opéra de Paris, although it continued to mount productions, primarily ballet, at the Palais Garnier; and the Opéra-Comique regained its autonomy. In 1994 the Opéra de Paris became the Opéra National de Paris. Regardless of all the changes in its "official" name, the company and its theatres were commonly referred to as the Opéra. The current managing director of the Opéra is Alexander Neef, since September 2020. Past principal conductors and music directors of

658-429: The Opéra for more than fifty years. Many of the great grand operas of the 19th century were presented for the first time on its stage, among them: Rossini's Guillaume Tell (1829), Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable (1831), Halévy's La Juive (1835), and Verdi's Don Carlos (1867). The theatre, which was 14,000 square metres in area with a 104 ft. stage, was quite advanced for its time. On 6 February 1822 gas

705-576: The Opéra for use in Paris. During Lully's time at the Opéra, performances were given all year, except for three weeks at Easter . Regular performances were on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. The premieres presented at court were usually during Carnival and were moved to the Palais-Royal after Easter, where the openings were on Thursdays. About two to three new works were mounted each year. In all, thirteen of Lully's tragédie en musique were performed there (see

752-623: The Opéra have included Myung-whun Chung , James Conlon and Philippe Jordan . In April 2021, the Opéra announced the appointment of Gustavo Dudamel as its next music director, effective 1 August 2021, with an initial contract of 6 seasons. In May 2023, Dudamel announced his resignation music director of the Opéra, effective August 2023. On 7 April 2023, the company launched a video streaming service, Paris Opera Play (or POP). The initial release consisted of 80 titles, including videos of operas, ballets, documentaries, and master classes. Subscribers can also watch video of live performances. Video

799-517: The Opéra was merged with the Opéra-Comique and the company name became Réunion des Théâtres Lyriques Nationaux. The Opéra-Comique was closed in 1972 with the appointment of Rolf Liebermann as general administrator of the Théâtre National de l'Opéra de Paris (1973–1980), but in 1976, the Opéra-Comique was restored. In 1990, the Opéra moved its primary venue to the new Opéra-Bastille , becoming

846-695: The Rue des Fossés de Nesles (now 42 Rue Mazarine), into a rectangular facility with provisions for stage machinery and scenery changes and a capacity of about 1200 spectators. The institution was renamed the Académie Royale de Musique and came to be known in France simply as the Opéra. Within one month Lully had convinced the king to expand the privilege by restricting the French and Italian comedians to using two singers rather than six, and six instrumentalists, rather than twelve. Because of legal difficulties Lully could not use

893-578: The Russians appreciated her talents. She was prima ballerina of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres in St. Petersburg from 1850 to 1853, working not only with Perrot but also Joseph Mazilier who staged for her La Jolie Fille de Gand and Vert-Vert especially for her. In 1854, with her daughter, Julie-Marie, she left Russia for Warsaw , where she intended to continue dancing. But she became pregnant by Prince Léon Radziwill, who persuaded her to retire from ballet at

940-635: The Salle de la Bouteille, and a new theatre was built by Carlo Vigarani at the Bel-Air tennis court on the Rue de Vaugirard . Later, Lully and his successors bitterly negotiated the concession of the privilege, in whole or in part, from the entrepreneurs in the provinces: in 1684 Pierre Gautier bought the authorisation to open a music academy in Marseille , then the towns of Lyon , Rouen , Lille and Bordeaux followed suit in

987-575: The Théâtre Favart and the Salle Louvois . The Salle Le Peletier was inaugurated on 16 August 1821 with a mixed-bill that opened with the anthem "Vive Henry VIII", and included the composer Catel's opera Les bayadères and the Ballet Master Gardel's ballet Le Retour de Zéphire . Although the theatre was meant to be temporary and was built of wood and plaster, it continued to be used by

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1034-538: The Wilis danced by Adèle Dumilâtre . It caused a sensation and inspired its reviewers to proclaim Giselle to be the greatest ballet of its time and a triumphant successor to the Romantic masterwork La Sylphide . It immediately established Grisi as a star in her very first full-length ballet in Paris. Her salary grew from 5,000 francs to 12,000 in 1842 and 20,000 by 1844, with additional performance fees on top. It also marked

1081-456: The accomplished danseur Jules Perrot . She next appeared in Paris at the Théâtre de la Renaissance (1840) and a year later, toured with Perrot to other parts of Europe. Through Perrot's contacts, the pair worked in Paris, London, Vienna , Munich , and Milan where she sang and danced. Of her two talents, it was her dancing that was acclaimed. By dancing Perrot's choreography, which at that time

1128-507: The beginning of a change in her relationship with Jules Perrot. Dance historian Lillian Moore says of her "In Grisi were united all the best attributes of the other outstanding ballerinas of the romantic period: the buoyant elevation of Taglioni , the technical virtuosity and mimic powers of Elssler , and the joyous, exuberant facility of Cerrito . If she could not claim to surpass her peers in any one aspect of her art, Grisi outstripped them all in versatility." Grisi's last performance in

1175-678: The building was destroyed by fire in 1873. In the second half of the 19th century, with the ascension of Napoleon III in 1851, the name Académie Impériale de Musique was reinstated and after 1870 with the formation of the Third Republic , was changed to Théâtre National de l'Opéra. In 1875, the institution occupied a new home, the Palais Garnier . Between 1908 and 1914 Henri Benjamin Rabaud conducted at Palais Garnier. Rabaud also composed several works which first premiered at Opéra-Comique , but were later also performed at Palais Garnier. In 1939,

1222-681: The company in 1802 and with the declaration of the French Empire in 1804, renamed the company the Académie Impériale de Musique . With the Restoration in 1814, the company was renamed the Académie Royale de Musique. It became part of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1816. In 1821, the company moved to the Salle Le Peletier , which had a capacity of 1900 spectators and where it remained until

1269-503: The company. Currently called the Opéra national de Paris , it mainly produces operas at its modern 2,723-seat theatre Opéra Bastille which opened in 1989, and ballets and some classical operas at the older 1,979-seat Palais Garnier which opened in 1875. Small scale and contemporary works are also staged in the 500-seat Amphitheatre under the Opéra Bastille. The company's annual budget

1316-502: The directors of the company. The Italian practice of preparing new settings of existing librettos was considered controversial and did not become the norm in Paris until around 1760. One of the most important of the new works during this period was an opéra-ballet by Campra called L'Europe galante presented in 1697. In 1661 Louis XIV, who was a dancer himself and one of the great architects of baroque ballet (the art form which would one day evolve into classical ballet ), established

1363-504: The enterprise from competition during its formative phase, was renewed for subsequent recipients of the privilege up to the early French Revolution . As Victoria Johnson points out, "the Opera was an organization by nature so luxurious and expensive in its productions that its very survival depended on financial protection and privilege." Perrin converted the Bouteille tennis court , located on

1410-489: The following years. During Lully's tenure, the only works performed were his own. The first productions were the pastorale Les fêtes de l'Amour et de Bacchus (November 1672) and his first tragedie lyrique called Cadmus et Hermione (27 April 1673). After Molière 's death in 1673, his troupe merged with the players at the Théâtre du Marais to form the Théâtre Guénégaud (at the same theatre that had been used by

1457-648: The great ballerinas to grace the stage of the Opéra during this time were Marie Taglioni , Carlotta Grisi , Carolina Rosati , Fanny Elssler , Lucile Grahn , and Fanny Cerrito . In 1858 the Salle Le Peletier was the setting for one of the most famous games in the history of Chess , the Opera Game between the American master Paul Morphy (White) and two French aristocrats, the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard. The game

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1504-506: The height of her fame. Grisi gave birth to her second daughter, Léontine Grisi, in 1855 and at the age of 34 settled in Saint-Jean, Geneva to live at Villa Grisi (also called Villa Saint-Jean; no longer extant), for the next 46 years of her life in peaceful retirement. She died there on 20 May 1899, at age 79. One of the creators of Giselle , Théophile Gautier , who was married to Carlotta's sister Ernestina, described her dancing as having

1551-534: The latter as an institution for performance. On 28 June 1669, Louis XIV signed the Privilège accordé au Sieur Perrin pour l'établissement d'une Académie d'Opéra en musique, & Vers François (Privilege granted to Sir Perrin for the establishment of an Academy of Opera in music, & French Verse). The wording of the privilège , based in part on Perrin's own writings, gave him the exclusive right for 12 years to found anywhere in France academies of opera dedicated to

1598-605: The new theatres that appeared during this period include: After about 1870, the situation was simpler with regard to opera, with primarily the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique in operation. The naming situation became somewhat confusing after the Opéra-Comique's theater (the second Salle Favart) burned on 25 May 1887, since the company began performing in other locations. Companies other than the Opéra producing operas or operettas at various theatres in this period included: Carlotta Grisi At her 1836 debut in London, Grisi performed with

1645-457: The performance of opera in French. He was free to select business partners of his choice and to set the price of tickets. No one was to have the right of free entry including members of the royal court, and no one else could set up a similar institution. Although it was to be a public theatre, it retained its status as royal academy in which the authority of the king as the primary stakeholder was decisive. The monopoly, originally intended to protect

1692-560: The period from 1725 to 1791 there were essentially four public theatres which were permitted in Paris: In 1762, the Opéra-Comique merged with the Comédie-Italienne. In 1791, the laws were changed allowing almost anyone to open a public theatre. This led to rapid growth in the number of theatres and companies and complexities in their naming. Theatres might burn down and be rebuilt using the name of an old or new company or patron. Some of

1739-523: The spot where the chapel would have been built. The Salle de la rue de Richelieu had been the principal venue of the Paris Opera since 1794. Very soon after the death of his nephew in February 1820, the king commissioned the architect François Debret to design a new theatre for the Opéra on the Rue Le Peletier , which was completed one year later. During the construction the opera and ballet companies occupied

1786-465: The theatre's existence, it had a number of different official names, the most important of which were: Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique (1821–1848), Opéra-Théâtre de la Nation (1848–1850), Théâtre de l'Académie Nationale de Musique (1850–1852), Théâtre de l'Académie Impériale de Musique (1852–1854), Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra (1854–1870), and Théâtre National de l'Opéra (1870–1873). When King Louis XVIII's nephew, Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry ,

1833-642: The west was in Paul Taglioni 's Les Métamorphoses (aka Satanella , 1849). In 1850, she joined Perrot in St. Petersburg , Russia, where he had been appointed ballet master , and she danced Giselle at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre . The first Giselle in Russia had been danced by Fanny Elssler , and so the initial reaction to Grisi's interpretation of the role was not enthusiastic. However, over time

1880-444: The École de Danse. The poet Pierre Perrin began thinking and writing about the possibility of French opera in 1655, more than a decade before the official founding of the Paris Opera as an institution. He believed that the prevailing opinion of the time that the French language was fundamentally unmusical was completely incorrect. Seventeenth-century France offered Perrin essentially two types of organization for realizing his vision:

1927-540: Was bitterly attacked by those enraged at the restrictions that Lully had caused to be placed on the French and Italian comedians. To mitigate the damage, Louis XIV arranged for new works to be premiered at the court, usually at the Chateau Vieux of the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye . This had the further advantage of subsidizing the cost of rehearsals, as well as most of the machinery, sets, and costumes, which were donated to

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1974-514: Was fatally stabbed on the night of 13 February 1820 in front of the former theatre of the Paris Opera, the Salle de la rue de Richelieu , the king decided that the theatre would be demolished in order to build a commemorative chapel in its place. However, the project to build a chapel was never carried out due to the 1830 revolution . Today the Fontaine Louvois in the Square Louvois occupies

2021-505: Was merely an extension of the opera, having yet to evolve into an independent form of theatrical art. As it became more important, however, the dance component of the company began to be referred to as the Paris Opera Ballet . In 1713 an associated ballet school was opened, today known as the Paris Opera Ballet School. The Académie Royale de Danse remained separate, and with the fall of the monarchy in 1789 it disappeared. With

2068-423: Was of a size consistent with good acoustics. Lully greatly desired a better theatre and persuaded the king to let him use the one at the Palais-Royal free of charge. The Théâtre du Palais-Royal had been altered in 1660 and 1671, but Lully, with 3,000 livres received from the king, had further changes made by Vigarani in 1674. The first production in the new theatre was Alceste on 19 January 1674. The opera

2115-427: Was played in the Duke's private box during a performance of Bellini's Norma . On the night of 29 October 1873, the Salle Le Peletier met the same fate as many of its predecessors: it was destroyed by a fire which raged for 27 hours, believed to have been started by the theatre's innovative gas lighting. Fortunately, in 1858 Emperor Napoleon III had hired the civic planner Baron Haussmann to begin construction on

2162-400: Was receiving great attention, she gained notable attention of both the public and the critics. Her greatest role however was that of Giselle . The world première of this two-act ballet was on 28 June 1841 at the Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique , Paris. The part of "Albrecht" was danced by Lucien Petipa (the brother of the great Marius Petipa ), with the part of Myrtha, Queen of

2209-563: Was used for the first time in order to light the stage effects in Nicolas Isouard 's opera Aladin ou La Lampe merveilleuse . The stage and orchestra pit were able to be removed in order to transform the auditorium into a massive hall which could accommodate large balls and other festivities. Along with the Ballet of Her Majesty's Theatre in London , the Salle Le Peletier played host to the heyday of

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