Tuesday, July 12, 2016

New day, new museum to see.  Dad didn’t want to do two big museums on consecutive days but we read that Tuesdays are one of the busiest days at Versailles so we decided to go for the Musee d’Orsay today instead.  The d’Orsay was originally a train station and was almost demolished in the 1970s after it fell out of use, but someone had the bright idea that this would be a great place to house all of the Impressionist art in the city and the d’Orsay was born.  When you walk in on the ground level, you get to overlook a central sculpture gallery, surrounded by smaller gallery rooms of paintings, divided by artist, style, time frame, etc.  Dad and Ellen went straight for the 5^th floor Impressionist gallery, while Margo and I started at the bottom and worked our way up.  On the first floor we admired works by Manet, Cezanne, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec, before moving on to the 2^nd level.  There we were greeted by Rodin’s sculpture The Gates of Hell, and then were on to see Gauguin and Van Gogh.  I didn’t know that they had a version of Starry Night here (I also didn’t know that Van Gogh painted more than one), but there it was, along with one of his self-portraits.  When we finally made it to the 5^th floor, we were overwhelmed with the works of Monet – Blue Water Lilies, in particular – Manet, Cussatt, Renoir, Pissaro, and more Cezanne and Degas.  Fascinating to look at all of them and to listen to the audio tour interpretation of many of them.  I think I liked this museum more than I liked the Louvre, maybe because there were just so many different things to see there.  The d’Orsay was a much easier and more satisfying experience because of the continuity of its artwork.

Second stop for the day – the Opera Garnier.  Napoleon III wanted to build a grand opera house for Paris and held a design contest to choose the architect, and Charles Garnier, then unknown, won the contest anonymously.  He started the project in 1861 and finished in 1875, but unfortunately, Napoleon III dies before its completion and never got to see the final product or sit in the emperor’s box.  We gathered in the ground floor rotunda for our guided tour and were led up the grand staircase, richly decorated with various types of marble and statuary, as well as many large mirrors where the rich and important season ticket holders could make sure they looked good before passing the entrance for the common people.  Inside the auditorium itself, everything is decorated in a deep red and gold color scheme, with a massive chandelier hanging from the ceiling.  Part of the chandelier once fell and killed a woman sitting in her seat below, which is what inspired Gaston Leroux to write The Phantom of the Opera about the Palais Garnier.  It seems that we Americans are far more familiar with the Phantom’s story from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical than the French are themselves.  Surrounding the chandelier is a brightly colored ceiling painted in the 1960s by Marc Chagall, which replaced the original ceiling.  Many people think the Chagall ceiling is too different and out of place in the opera house, but I liked it better than the original.  Our guide pointed out the Emperor’s box, and close to it, the infamous Box 5, reserved for the Phantom of the Opera, and led us through the Salon du Soleil, the Salon de la Lune, and the Salon du Glacier, before sending us off to explore on our own if we wanted.  The last thing we did was admire the exquisitely constructed mosaic marble tile floors and ceilings – what a task it must have been to put them together, piece by piece, not to mention the cutting of all of the little pieces.  The tour guide was right when she said that the place was “priceless” – there would be no way we could build a structure such as this today.