Page 157 - HandbookMarch1

7
Dorota Babilas
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Interestingly, for Garnier himself any construction was a sort of text possible
to be analysed in writing. In fact, the theory behind the Paris Opera house was
thoroughly explained by him in his two books: Le Theatre (1871) and Le Nouvel
Opera (1876). Garnier’s vision combined the views of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,
where he had studied, with his analysis of the interactions between architecture
and society. For him, the innovative character of the Opera lay in the fact that, as
a theatre, it should provide ‘a permanently set stage on which to act out the rituals
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of society.’ Such an opinion pointed to the bold supposition that in the nineteenth-
century theatre most of the acting took place not on the stage, but during the
entr’actes, in foyers and galleries. Garnier tried to translate this literary concept
into architectural terms, believing deeply in the symbiotic relationship between
human nature and architecture, in which built forms were seen as a consequence,
not a determinant, of social actions.
The edifice proved to be very controversial, causing heated discussions whether
the creation of Garnier, the brilliant son of a blacksmith, was an architectural
masterpiece or the epitome of the bad taste of the nouveau riche. It was
unashamedly impressive, filled with all the pathos and theatricality of both opera
as a genre, and Napoleon III’s anachronistic monarchy; it combined the mood of
celebration with that of a trade exhibition embodied by the evanescent glamour
of London’s Crystal Palace. In its aspirations, the Palais Garnier was close to the
Wagnerian concept of Gesamtkunstwerk - a total work of art embracing on the
one hand architecture, interior design, sculpture, painting, mosaic work etc., and
on the other the performing arts of music, acting, dance and singing. In a modern,
science-dominated world, art replaced religion as a means of achieving spiritual
experience and also as a social sedative. The home of opera was transformed into a
lay shrine of beauty and pleasure.
Gaston Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera (1910) reflects the
complexity of its architectural counterpart. It both glorifies and mocks the Second
Empire, meets Gothic prejudice with detached scepticism of a journalist, and
uncovers the small-town morality behind the seemingly highbrow, science-
conscious minds of the contemporaries. Yet, the power of Leroux’s book lies not
in an innovative intrigue, which in fact is an eclectic compilation of many earlier
cultural motives, nor even in the writer’s skill. Despite great aspirations, Gaston
Leroux is a much inferior novelist compared with Victor Hugo, whom he greatly
admired and whose works – Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) and L’Homme Qui Rit
(1869) - echo in The Phantom. The novel was originally received without great
enthusiasm and quickly went out of print, its popularity developing slowly in time
only thanks to subsequent film adaptations.
First of all, it remains an homage paid to Garnier and his Opera. Leroux

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Ibid., 113.