A word of warning:
If things Rodentia make you squeamish, if rotting corpses and cemeteries make
you ill, if the sight of human bones upsets you, please realize that this visual
presentation features...
all these things.
So, why is this presentation called:
Paris in the Year of the Rat?
For 12 glorious days in May of 2008, my mother and I enjoyed all the wonders, sights and sounds of Paris! But we didn't see what most consider the usual tourist sites, in fact we spent a lot of our time underground and... with the dead!
Also, on the Chinese calendar, 2008 was the Year of the Rat.
So, what goes better with corpses, an opera house Phantom, a hunchbacked bell-ringer, a city renown for it's underground labyrinth...
...and, with an estimated 4 rats for each Parisian, something of a rodent problem?
A quest to spot Paris' rats, of course!
Therefore, please enjoy this presentation which will explore Paris above and below ground and introduce you to some of it's 8 million furrier inhabitants: rats!
statistics from http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3835335.ece
Our Arrival and the Opera Garnier
If you've never been to Europe, I highly recommend going and Paris is an amazing and condensed city to start! There's so much to see and do, we never left the city and had no trouble getting around without a car (well, except for the bus strike). This was my first trip to a European city, and compared to North America everything was so old and big and amazing... and really, really OLD! It was difficult at times to truly understand the depth of the history...
So here's our wee hotel room (with both the bathroom and closet doors at the foot of one of the two beds) and our Hotel de Roubaix as viewed from the street. It was excellently located, about 15 minutes walking from the Seine and Notre Dame Cathedral.
Yes, everything in Europe seems big, except your hotel room!
The little purple star (center right) on this map marks our hotel!
(You can click on any picture with a bevelled edge for a larger image.)
When anyone asks, "What was the best thing we saw?", I answer the Opera, the Opera Garnier which was our first stop! It was quite literally like walking into a jewel box: everything glittered in gold, 8 types of marble and you could imagine the Phantom in so many shadowy places! It was magical, like revisiting a dream!
Our photo...
and the postcard!
The detail on the exterior of the building was magnificent!
On the left is the infamous Carpeaux carving entitled "The Dance". It caused quite the scandal in its time and the original is now safely on display in the Louvre, away from vandals.
On the right is an image of the same statute with the Opera's crowds.
And then we stepped inside...
WOW!
The photos don't do it justice, it was magical!
It was our first tour in a grand Parisian building and everything was HUGE and gorgeously ornate, every detail considered. Even the pipe connections were hidden under lovely, bronze salamanders.
There I am on the famous staircase and there's Mom on one of the balconies overseeing the staircase. Glamorous?! People didn't come for the performance on the stage, they came to be part of the scene!
In fact, the space in the building allotted to the stage and backstage is quite small.
This is the ballroom that runs the length of the front of the building, with a chandelier in detail on the right.
Speaking of chandeliers, here is the famous Chagall ceiling and the chandelier suspended over the audience. The Chagall ceiling is actually very important to all tourists who visit the Opera Garnier because it's only due to the insistence of people who wanted to see the ceiling that the Opera was opened to the public outside of performance hours.
And while the chandelier never fell as in Gaston Leroux's Phantom of the Opera, one of its counterweights did once fall, killing a stagehand.
And the Phantom's Lake? It's there, but the lower areas are not open to the public. The lake is now used by the fire department as a water reservoir.
black and white images from The Complete Phantom of the Opera by George Perry
The Opera Garnier truly is an "enchanted cocoon"!
And were there any rats, you ask? OH YES!
Only not the kind you were expecting:
These are the Opera Rats: the illegitimate male children of the dancers and their "benefactors", who were trained in the attic to perform onstage.
These pages created by Karen Waschinski
Questions? Comments? Please e-mail me at woosel[at]total.net
~~Dà Fhaol Mharbh: A Vampyre's Faerytale by Karen Waschinski (with Debra Yee)~~
