Sunday. The ballet, at Opéra Garnier: Psyche and Phèdre, two separate short pieces. The magnificent gilded froth of the place itself is distracting, humbling (I’d only ever set foot in it once before, and then not for an actual performance), and makes you feel underdressed. You feel like a character in some period film. Even the loges are divided into tiny boxettes, four seats each (even unto the very top, I observed, unlike, say, the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, where at that height you get a common bench). Any more dressed up, though, and I would have felt compelled to break down and take a taxi. I was wearing a skirt! all the concession I could make, all dressier options being too warm for the still very warm day and public transit. On a first visit I definitely wouldn’t have found my seat without the helpful young usher(ette), behind one of many narrow, gilt-numbered doors, two flights up. By arriving a bit breathless and a bit sweaty, though, I felt justified in extracting a folding fan from my purse (the program just not getting the job done); its cheap painted paper and metal having to stand in for lace or feathers, lying there at rest on the wide edge of the balcony.
Next to me, just beyond the divider in the next compartment, sat the daughter of the harpist (not over three years old) and her father. She behaved beautifully throughout the entire performance, only waving repeatedly to her mother whenever the lights were up, who would wave back. Unfortunately some child across the way, seemingly in one of the boxes, was not so civilized, or socialized, speaking out loudly and at random repeatedly—and staying for the whole show.
Just—Wikipedia the place itself (there really was an underground lake that had to be drained to build it, among other things). I will say that I think the Chagall paintings in the center of the ceiling are interesting and charming because they’re out of sync with the style of the rest of the house, bringing a flavor of another era to it.
The ballets themselves—well, Phèdre is extremely stylized, all the choreography and even costumes dictated by Jean Cocteau, so that you get whole groups in matching costumes of odd color combinations down to gloves and wigs that carry out the theme. The dancing is very professional, but I will concede the man next to me had dozed off and I was feeling a bit sleepy myself. After the “entr’acte,” when I wandered around our floor of the building and took some photos (and found the ladies’ room), Psyche proved to be more traditional, considerably more sentimental and even corny—but very pretty. And of course the dancing was superb. (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/arts/dance/paris-opera-ballets-phedre-and-psyche-review.html?_r=1 , if you’re more of a balletomane)
When I’d de-Cinderellaed and arrived back home via subway, the red geranium petals scattered on the sidewalk from my neighbor’s window box reminded me of the rose petals that had fluttered down at the close.
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