Opéra Bastille

Stand for a moment on the broad stone steps and look up. A wall of glass curves above you, set in a grid of pale stone and dark metal. It reflects the traffic circling the square, the passing buses, the gold figure on the column behind you. Listen, and you hear Paris moving at full speed: scooters, horns, voices from the cafés. Yet behind this glass is one of the largest opera houses in Europe, a building made for silence and sound.

This is the Opéra Bastille. It is one of the two main stages of the Paris National Opera. The other is the Palais Garnier, the gilded nineteenth-century palace across the city. The two buildings could hardly be more different. Garnier is velvet, marble and painted ceilings. The Bastille is glass, stone and clean modern lines. Many Parisians have strong opinions about which they prefer. You are standing in front of the younger, and the more argued-about, of the pair.

To understand why it stands here, turn around and face the square. This is the Place de la Bastille. On 14 July 1789, crowds stormed a royal fortress and prison on this spot. That day became the symbol of the French Revolution. The fortress was taken apart stone by stone soon afterwards. Today nothing of it stands above ground. But in some of the surrounding streets, lines of paving stones trace where its walls once ran. Keep an eye on the ground as you walk.

The tall column in the middle of the square is often mistaken for a monument to 1789. In fact, it remembers a later uprising. The July Column honours the revolution of 1830, when Parisians rose against another king. The gilded figure on top is known as the Spirit of Freedom. He holds a broken chain in one hand and a torch in the other. When the sun is low, he flashes gold above the traffic.

Now, the opera house itself. In the early 1980s, President François Mitterrand launched a series of large public buildings for Paris. They became known as the Grands Projets, or the Great Projects. The glass pyramid at the Louvre belongs to the same programme. One goal was a new opera house for a wide public — larger, more modern, and less grand than Garnier. An international architecture competition was held, and the jury chose a design by Carlos Ott, a Uruguayan-born architect working in Canada.

Here is the first surprise. The jury reportedly believed they had picked a design by a far more famous architect. The entries were anonymous, and one popular account says the selection came as a shock to almost everyone, perhaps including Ott himself. It is a story often told in Paris, so treat the details with some caution. What is certain is that a relatively unknown architect won one of the most visible commissions in the country.

The date of the opening was chosen with great care. The building was inaugurated on 13 July 1989, the eve of the two hundredth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. World leaders were in Paris for the celebrations. The full opera season, however, began only the following year. The first major production was Berlioz's The Trojans, a vast French epic. It was a fitting choice for a stage built to handle enormous productions.

And that is the second surprise. What you see from the square is only part of the building. Behind and below the public spaces lies a huge working machine. There is the main stage, plus several large side and rear stages of similar size. Whole sets can slide into place, so one opera can be performed in the evening while another is rehearsed. Workshops for scenery and costumes sit inside the same complex. In a sense, the Bastille is as much a factory as a theatre.

The main auditorium seats around 2,700 people. Inside, the mood is calm and sober. The walls are clad in grey-blue stone, the seats are dark, and wood panels shape the ceiling. There are no gold cherubs here, no glittering chandelier. The idea was that every seat should see and hear well. Many visitors say the sightlines feel more democratic than in the old opera houses, where the best views belonged to private boxes.

The building has not had an easy life. Not long after it opened, some of the stone panels on the facade began to crack and loosen. For years, safety nets were stretched across parts of the exterior to catch falling fragments. Critics in the press had a field day. Repairs and replacement work followed. When you look at the facade now, you may notice differences in tone between panels — small signs of that long story of fixing.

The site itself has another layer of history. Before the opera, this ground held a railway station. Trains ran from here eastwards towards Vincennes, carried above the streets on a long brick viaduct. The station closed in the late 1960s and was later demolished. The viaduct survived. Today its arches hold craft workshops and galleries, and its top is a planted walkway, one of the first elevated parks of its kind in the world.

The neighbourhood around you has a strong character too. The Faubourg Saint-Antoine, just to the east, was for centuries the quarter of furniture makers and woodworkers. Look into the courtyards along its streets and you may still find old workshop signs. To the south, the Arsenal basin holds small boats where the canal meets the Seine. On market days, the boulevard north of the square fills with stalls of fruit, cheese and fish.

If you have time, step inside. The public areas often stay busy before performances, as people gather on the stairs and in the glass foyers. From the upper levels, the view back over the square is one of the best in the area. You see the column, the rooftops, and the endless loop of traffic. Some performances sell out far in advance, but last-minute and standing places sometimes appear for those who are patient.

Before you go, look once more at the glass. It holds the whole square in reflection — the column, the sky, the people on the steps beside you. A fortress once stood a few paces away. A railway once ran beneath your feet. Now there is music behind these walls, most evenings of the season. As you walk away, listen. Somewhere inside, an orchestra may already be tuning.