The Opera-House was designed and built in 1878 by the famous architect Charles Garnier (1825–1898). Construction work began in June, 1878, and advanced at a record rate as only 8 months and 16 days separated the laying of the first foundation stones and the application of the sstucco and paintings on the vaulted ceiling. This record time was made possible thanks to night lighting and workers rotating on day and night shifts. The inauguration was held on January 25th, 1879.
The stage formed a small music room decorated with five canvases, only one of which has survived : “L'Allégorie de la Danse” (artist unknown), paint with paste on canvas, 178 x 675 cm. It now hangs on the wall of one of the private salons of the Salle des Palmiers at the Sporting Monte-Carlo. The other canvases that adorned the stage were “La Musique” by Monginot, “La Poésie” by M. Dusautoy, “Le Chant” by M. Barrias and “La Comédie” by M. Motte.
In 1897, it was decided to carry out a lot of alterations. The modifications were entrusted to the architect Henri Schmit. Charles Garnier, suffering from illness, wrote to the Management to indicate his displeasure.
The room’s dimensions make it an almost perfect square : 20 m long by 21 m wide.
The frame of the stage measured 10.75 x 6.50 m, the stage itself 12 x 12 m with 2 m of wings all around it. The Opera seated 525 spectators. The two boxes on either side of the stage were essentially ornamental, just like the 12 bull’s-eye windows supposed to light the vaulted ceiling, which is crowned by allegorical heads contributed by the sculptor Félix Chabaud. In the four corners of the ceiling, statues of well-known figures by Jules Thomas eternally wave their golden palms to the glory of the Sovereign Prince. The arch of the stage is crowned by two more figures produced by Jean Gautherin.
The vaulted ceiling is adorned with four panels painted on canvas that was then stuck on to the ceiling : “La Musique Instrumentale” by Gustave Boulanger (1824-1888), winner of the “Prix de Rome” in1849, hangs above the stage. The conductor is a tall woman with red hair and unfurled wings, leaning backwards in a vertiginous arc. Next to her, two young girls with languid faces, dressed in white, play their violins. Three superb harpists, a young shepherd of Ancient Greece, an African with a tambourine, horn and trumpet players form the orchestra. Nothing has been left to chance ; the tiniest detail in this painting was studied and carefully executed in the artist’s studio.
In the middle of the panel by Frédéric Lix, winner of a bronze medal at the World Fair of 1889, (born on December 18th, 1830, in Strasbourg – died in Paris in 1897), “La Comédie”, on the sea side, sits next to young poet about to write on his tablets words of inspiration culled from his half-naked muse, who waves a mask above her head. At his feet, a woman with blond hair, as sparsely clad as good taste allows. Is she perhaps Venus ? Or is she a nymph ? Further to the side, “La Renommée” uses a double trumpet to transmit the poet’s praises to all four corners of the world. Two groups of lovers : the first waltzing on the flowery grass, the second resting in the shade of the orange-trees. All these mythological characters stand out against a blue sea and sky where tritons and naiads play. Georges Clairin (1843–1919) had already worked with Garnier on the decoration of the ceiling in the auditorium at the Paris Opera. Here, on the left side of the room, he stages “La Danse” in all its forms, in all ages, in its most primitive and varied costumes. He shows her unclad, solely adorned by the shimmer of an orange scarf against her black hair, an admirable feminine form recalling Phryné on the sand of Greek beaches. Then comes an oriental dancer with golden sequins under veils of silk, and a mysterious apparition emerging from clumps of flowers. They dance to the strains of an invisible orchestra conducted by a genie with unfurled wings. The dancers of the Opera run around, surrounded by gauze, tulle, sequins, spangles of gold. Let’s not forget the Spanish dancer and her Figaro, and the various Harlequins from the “Commedia dell'Arte”. The entire troupe is present, dominated by a black Domino wearing silk clothes and a bewitching smile.
In “Le Chant et L'Eloquence”, above the Prince’s box, the poetic and melancholy nature of painter François Fayen–Perrin (1826–1888) produced a work which does not have the glossy brilliance of its neighbours. It doesn’t sing about the great combats of Antiquity, nor the gaiety of the gods of Olympus, but instead about Homer, the Greek poet, grown old and blind, wandering from town to town and reciting his verses. Old men with long white hair, young shepherds and dark-skinned young women listen to his poems in fascination. The painting by the artist Feyen-Perrin, “La Ronde Antique” was kept at the Château de Cormatin (?), doubtless thanks to Raoul Gunsbourg, an avid collector. It inspired Henri Matisse when he created his various versions of “La Danse” in 1910, a monumental composition commissioned by the Barnes Foundation of the USA.
Each of these four paintings measures 15 x 6 m.
On May 27th, 1966, on the occasion of Monte-Carlo’s centenary celebrations, a great ball entitled “Les Fastes du Second Empire” was held at the Opera and on its terraces, reached by a staircase specially built for the evening.
The Salle Garnier has been totally restored while preserving its classical spirit. This undertaking made it possible to rediscover the original decor and its huge chandelier. Entrusted to Mr Alain-Charles Perrot, head architect of France’s Historic Monuments, the restoration work began on September Ist, 2003, and was completed on September 9th, 2005. The official inauguration took place on November 19th, on the occasion of Monaco’s National Fête, with an exceptional evening on the program : “Le Voyage à Reims” by Rossini. The restoration work consisted of : renovation of the roof, restructuring of the building itself and modifications to the basement and stage, plus renovation of the auditorium and the huge chandelier.
While it had taken Charles Garnier only 8 months to build the concert hall, 2 whole years proved necessary to restore its former sumptuousness - still with the same passion for excellence.
On the cornice of the Prince’s entrance to the Opera, one can admire a bronze bas-relief in the tympanum by sculptor Henri-Louis Cordier (1853–1926). It is composed of two allegorical figures, half-seated, smiling at each other across a coat-of-arms. They are “La Musique” and “La Danse”. “La Musique” naturally holds the famous, traditional lyre, which has not been played for centuries, and which she is getting ready to pluck with a plectrum that the uninitiated might take for a meat-bone. * Plectrum : A Greek term which, in its primitive sense, means something that is used to strike (from “plhssw”, to strike), and which later, in both Greek and Latin, was used to designate a short baton or feather pipe, used to make the strings of an instrument vibrate, either by inserting it between them or, if necessary, by letting it run from one string to the next. Dictionary of Ancient Greek and Latin – Anthony Rich, 1883.
“La Danse”, with a crown of vines in her hair, waves in one hand the famous thyrsus topped by the obligatory pine cone, while shaking in her other hand the resonant shells of castanets. * Thyrsus : In Greek, then Roman, mythology, a thyrsus is a large baton rather like a sceptre. Probably made of dogwood, it is adorned with ivy leaves and topped by a pine cone. In some variants, the ivy is replaced by vines, and the pine cone by a pomegranate. The thyrsus was the major attribute of Dionysos, occasionally borrowed for Bacchus.
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