Charles Garnier's design was chosen for being the best and most simplistic, clear, logical and grandeur thanks to all the unique and superior qualities presented in his plans for the beautiful opera house.

In the second phase he improved greatly to first place while the winner of the first competition did worse. The first phase was out of 171 applicants which Charles won 5th place in narrowly becoming one of the 5 finalist competing for the second phase. The actual design of the opera house was created by Charles Garnier who won the architectural competition on May 29th 1861.

Palais Garnier was commissioned as part of the reconstruction of Paris that was initiated by Emperor Napoleon III. This fact alone makes the Palais Garnier worth seeing if you have any love of opera and the stage. Palais Garnier was the scene for the famous screenplay, The Phantom of the Opera, which was originally written by Gaston Leroux and later adapted to a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1986. Today it is mainly used to host ballet productions and is no longer the primary home of the Paris Opera since the Opera Bastille opened in 1989 with the ability to seat 2,700 guests. Originally called the Salle des Capucines, it was renamed Palais Garnier to celebrate its grandeur and its architect, Charles Garnier. Construction started in 1861 and finished 14 years later in 1875. Nor do they see two stagehands attired in period costume catch the chandelier as deftly as Orioles star Matt Wieters fielding a fastball, and guide it to rest on the stage floor.Palais Garnier is an opera house that was built to seat 1,979 guests.

It's not designed that way to save money, but to make it easier to land with all its crucial parts intact.Ī strobe light flashes as the prop starts to fall earthward, so the audience doesn't see the two handles protruding from the rear of the device. So, for the first time, the creative team is willing to illuminate the stage tricks used to operate the costly contraption. Once the current national tour ends in November, show officials say, it's unlikely that there will be another traveling 'Phantom' production so large and technically complicated that it barely fits into 21 48-foot long semis. 'In each theater that we go into,' Hansen says, 'we have to do between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of exterior steel work.' Other theaters eager to present the enormously popular musical underwent costly structural improvements, and at least one, in Dayton, Ohio, was designed with 'Phantom's' engineering requirements specifically in mind.

The paris opera house chandelier