Some 200 million Euros are about to be spent on repairing a decaying estate.
Both the Garnier and the Bastille will need to shut for two years.
At present, one will close in July 2027 and the other in July 2030.
But the plans have yet to receive full approval and the budget is terrifying.
The Syracuse Opera Company has filed for bankruptcy,…
This is the forbidding Erich Leinsdorf, conducting the…
Ars Choralis Coeln has announced the death of…
A barely recognisable version of Puccini’s last opera…
Session expired
Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.
Time to raze the Bastille, it is the world’s ugliest opera house, handicap unfriendly, accoustically dead, all good Parisians are invited to storm it again.
But where will all the menacing dossers who camp out under the building go?
But you can see from everywhere, unlike in horseshoe auditoriums.
Budget qui n’est rien comparé à celui de la rénovation de l’opéra Stuttgart, estimé à 1,5 milliards d’euros !
The Garnier is a treasure to behold!
OK if you like that sort of thing.
I think it’s hideous. Reminds me of the Vittoriano in Rome.
I’m all for saving the Palais Garnier, but how long has the Bastille been open? 34 years? How come it has decayed so quickly?
Yes I’m surprised to hear Bastille will have to close as well. Hopefully they will improve the acoustics. The general experience there is disappointing.
It always depends on the place.
Funny, pretty sure Garnier had a huge refurbishment. I thought I went to the reopening performances… Bastille is under 40 years old. Even the Festival Hall waited until it was 54 before undergoing a huge refurbishment which effected almost no change to the auditorium experience – paid for by turning the complex into a food court.
And France is almost bankrupt….. dreams of grandeur for what has become a second rate country. Pharaonic Potemkine Olympic games. So not sure of what will happen with operas….
France is financially, intellectually and culturally bankrupt.
The biggest problems in France are some of the highest levels of administrative incompetence and public financial waste that can be found anywhere in the world, a population with a very poor general education where they have few skills required in a modern 21st century world, with most having very poor English language skills and poor or non-existent other foreign language skills, low levels of openness, friendliness and curiosity interacting with foreigners from other cultures, little interest in other ways of thinking and doing things, very low levels of individual initiative/innovation and one of the most crushing and suffocating bureaucracies of any “modern” society. Little will change in France, no matter how bad the situation will get there, as the population have been educated and brainwashed to be helpless conformists, to believe that the highly centralised ultra-bureaucratised Government will resolve all of their problems and an inherent hatred/jealousy of those who take personal initiative, are successful and have made money from their hard work and talents. It is a petty, small-minded society that is today confronted with terrible problems on nearly every level and an inability to do anything to change it on a grassroots level. The French just complain, sit and wait for their bureaucrats to remedy the terrible situation that their country finds itself in. Sadly little will happen except the usual non-productive pathetic violent demonstrations that France is known for, more calls for ever higher taxes and more hatred of the rich and the successful. France turns in circles and makes little or no progress and they have been turning in circles for decades and will sadly fall ever further behind and become ever more irrelevant on the world stage.
The Opéra Bastille is a perfect example of why Governments should not be involved so deeply in cultural matters. I invite anyone to read about and familiarise themselves with the history of the Opéra Bastille, from its opening in 1989 until today. It is not a pretty or inspiring story, but yet another French ‘grand projet’ masterminded by bureaucrats without careful planning and considering the needs of the building…hence, it has horrible acoustics, difficult stage access for the performers and a construction that already started falling apart just over a year after it opened, with the entire building covered in netting to stop masonry from falling off the building and hurting people walking on the street. It is the perfect symbol of the French way of doing things: chaotic, no planning, impractical, pretentious, administrative, bureaucratic, superficial and wasteful. Bref…un échec.
Yes, but apart from that ……….
Well said. Having lived in France for 6 years and having fortunately got out, I agree with every point you mention. It is sad, but it is a fact and facts and reality are something that French people can never face, preferring to live in denial, delusions of grandeur and their past history from the 18th century. It won’t end well there in the 21st century.
Could equally be said for certain other countries…
The government in Hong Kong controls virtually all the arts – hardware and software. It spends huge amounts and gets a few crumbs of artistic excellence. Of one theatre it built into a cliffside, a highly experienced consultant was brought in from Europe to try and sort out its problems. His advice – drill holes in the cliff, fill them with dynamite and blow it all up! Then build a proper theatre! The government controls and runs several performing companies of which a Report around 25 years ago illustrated that two had to have every seat sold subsidised, one to the tune of 93% the other 97%. It throws money down the drain and then admonishes companies for overspending. Per head of population it itself must spend vastly more than almost any other country! Great if spent wisely (as a little indeed is) but far too much disappears down a very deep sinkhole. Singapore seems to have a much more enlightened arts policy and is streets ahead.
He who is without a messed-up country, cast the first stone!