Behind the Curtain at the Paris Opera
巴黎歌剧院，一场延续百年的视觉盛宴

The most breathtaking subway exit in the world may be the one at Place de l’Opéra in Paris. Its final steps lead to a postcard-ready view of the sensational Palais Garnier, the love-it-or-hate-it theater with a Baroque, Renaissance and all-around garish pastiche that overwhelms and enchants at every turn.

世界上最惊心动魄的地铁出口，可能是在巴黎歌剧院广场站。最后几级台阶，通往宛如明信片般壮美的巴黎加尼埃歌剧院(Palais Garnier)，这是一座让人或爱或恨的剧场，是巴洛克、文艺复兴全方位华丽集大成之作，每个角度都让人震撼和着迷。

It was designed by Charles Garnier — you can find a gaudy monument to him outside — and built between 1861 and 1875. Until 1989, it housed both the Paris Opera and the Paris Opera Ballet, until nearly all the opera productions moved to the Garnier’s antithesis: the coldly modern, widely reviled Opéra Bastille.

它由夏尔·加尼埃(Charles Garnier)设计——你可以在外面找到一座他的俗丽纪念碑——建于1861年至1875年。在1989年之前，这里一直是巴黎歌剧团(Paris Opera)和巴黎歌剧芭蕾舞团(Paris Opera Ballet)驻地，直到几乎所有的歌剧作品都搬到了加尼埃的对立面：带有冷酷的现代风格、广受诟病的巴士底歌剧院(Opéra Bastille)。

But the Garnier has always been so much more than just an opera house. It’s essential to the identity of Paris, like the Notre-Dame or Arc de Triomphe. It has transcended further to the realm of pop culture, inspiring Gaston Leroux’s 1910 potboiler novel “The Phantom of the Opera” — and the 1980s Andrew Lloyd Webber megamusical, adding to the thriller an over-the-topness matched only by the opera house itself.

但是，一直以来，加尼埃不仅仅是一座歌剧院。它对巴黎的身份至关重要，就和圣母院或凯旋门一样。它已经超越了流行文化的范畴，启发了加斯顿·勒鲁(Gaston Leroux)的1910年通俗小说《歌剧魅影》(The Phantom of the Opera)——以及1980年代安德鲁·劳埃德·韦伯(Andrew Lloyd Webber)的超级音乐剧，为这个惊悚故事增添了一种只有歌剧院本身才能与之媲美的极致感。

Step inside, though, and it’s immediately clear why the Garnier has cast a spell for so long. No space is left undecorated: the Grand Staircase seemingly stolen from a storybook, the Salon de la Lune’s and Salon du Soleil’s lamps reflected in facing mirrors to infinity. And the Grand Foyer’s Baroque furnishings — ornate columns, multitiered chandeliers, a painted ceiling — are enough to make you faint or feel, for one night, like the star of your own fairy tale.

不过，一旦走到内部，你会立刻明白为什么加尼埃的魅力可以如此恒久。所有空间都经过精心装饰：中央大楼梯好像从故事书里偷来，月亮沙龙和太阳沙龙的灯光在相对的一面面镜子中交相辉映，无穷无尽。大门厅里的巴洛克式装潢——华丽的柱子、多层枝形吊灯和彩绘天花板——足以让你昏厥，或者让你在整夜里都感觉自己就像童话故事中的主人公。

In the nearly 150 years since the Garnier opened, the building has been updated repeatedly, including electric lighting being installed in the 1880s. Lamps in costume storage add a touch of the modern to an otherwise thoroughly antique space, though now the backstage rooms are devoted mostly to ballet productions, such as the past season’s revival of Rudolf Nureyev’s “Swan Lake.”

在加尼埃歌剧院落成后的近150年里，这座建筑一直在不断更新，包括1880年代安装的电灯。服装储藏间的灯具为这个原本古色古香空间增添了一丝现代气息，不过现在后台的房间主要用于芭蕾舞作品，比如上一季鲁道夫·努列耶夫(Rudolf Nureyev)《天鹅湖》(Swan Lake)的复排版。

Among the theater’s most famous fixtures are the chandelier and the painted ceiling that surrounds it — originally by Jules Eugène Lenepveu, then replaced in 1964 with a new, sprawling work by Marc Chagall depicting scenes from operas by Mozart, Wagner and more.

剧院最著名的设施之一是枝形吊灯和环绕它的彩绘天花板——最初由朱勒·尤金·勒内弗(Jules Eugène Lenepveu)绘制，1964年被马克·夏加尔(Marc Chagall)的一幅巨大的新作所取代，后者描绘了莫扎特、瓦格纳等人歌剧中的场景。

The theater is ornately grand, yet relatively intimate, with a seating capacity of less than 2,000 — roughly half that of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Its count of plush burgundy seats is at its peak in the final moments before every show, when the center aisle closes, filled in with more chairs that fold out to leave no space unused.

这座剧院富丽堂皇，但相对私密，仅可容纳不到2000人——大约是纽约大都会歌剧院的一半。每一场演出开始前的最后一刻，紫红色长毛绒座椅的数量都会达到最大值，那时中间的通道被关闭，放满折叠椅，不留下任何闲置的空间。

The ballets scored by Tchaikovsky get mixed treatment at the Garnier. In 2016, the director Dmitri Tcherniakov reunited “The Nutcracker” with its original double-bill partner, the opera “Iolanta,” for an evening with a plot that runs through both works, set amid 20th-century Soviet life. At first glance, the Nureyev staging of “Swan Lake,” which premiered in 1984, looks far more traditional, with hallmarks of 19th-century classicism like white tutus and feathered headpieces. But Nureyev added a dark, distinctly modern Freudian dimension to one of ballet’s most famous tragedies.

柴可夫斯基谱曲的芭蕾舞剧在加尼埃得到了不同的处理。2016年，导演德米特里·切尔尼亚科夫(Dmitri Tcherniakov)将《胡桃夹子》和它最初的套演剧目——歌剧《约兰塔》(Iolanta)重新组合在一起，在同一个晚上演，故事情节贯穿了两部作品，背景都是20世纪的苏联生活。乍看上去，1984年首次登台的努列耶夫版《天鹅湖》要传统得多，带有19世纪古典主义的特征，比如白色短裙和羽毛头饰。但是，努列耶夫为这部芭蕾史上最著名的悲剧之一增添了黑暗、鲜明的现代弗洛伊德主义色彩。

For the Paris Opera’s 350th anniversary this year — and the 30th anniversary of its modern house on Place de la Bastille — the company commissioned a series of installations, “Saturnales,” by the French artist Claude Lévêque. One of them, created with the Paris Opera’s workshop, is a pair of gilded tires that blend seamlessly with, and even add rhythm to, the Garnier’s Grand Staircase.