Paris Opera House; Charles Garnier’s Passion Triomphed Over Depression, Anxiety And Grief

Charles Garnier’s professional destiny was to be as marvelously rich and world acclaimed as his opulent architectural masterpiece; the Paris Opera, rightfully named in his honor.  This immensely talented man was unstoppable, yet his personal life was over shadowed with constant battles of severe bouts of depression, anxiety, doubts, hypochondria and grief.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to relish again this magnificent palace of opulence that is the largest opera house in the world, and has housed the world’s greatest opera singers and ballet dancers for over a hundred and thirty nine years. There is a sense of reverence as you enter these hallowed halls.

The grandeur that  Charles Garnier designed and incorporated in all of his creations, came from a man who was raised in the most humble of settings.  Jean Louis Charles Garnier was born on November 6th 1825, on Rue Mouffetard in Paris.

At that time, it was a very poor part of the city , albeit colorful with vegetables merchants hawking their produce in the stifling malodorous smells given off by the very polluted river Bievre,which is now covered over.  His father was a blacksmith, who also repaired horse-drawn carriages, that he would rent out.

He was said to have been a sickly child, who would in turn become a frail teenager.  Because of this, his father gave up hopes that his son would someday take over his blacksmithing business.

Looking back over his life, perhaps this was a form of grace that opened the sky of possibilities to other worlds beyond his dreams.  He was late in starting primary school, but was noted to be gifted in math and geometry.

He was named “le braqué”, or bird dog, because he was a willful and intense child.  In his teens, he started drawing classes at the École des Dessins, which opened to provide poor children exposure to the drawing arts for free.

His teachers were the first to describe him as “a bundle of nerves” that would eventually worsen and plague him, throughout his entire life.  Two of his classmates would later become sculptors that he would later employ in building his masterpiece.

Because of his developing talent and newborn passion for sketching, it was his mother, Felicité, who made sure to provide him with all the pencils and supplies needed.  She is given credit for suggesting the possibility of him becoming an architect, after learning that architects could make a decent living, that would allow her son to rise above their struggling existence.

In those days architectural students learned their profession usually by being an apprentice with established architects of the day.  Some also would study classical designs at the very prestigious École des Beaux Arts.

By a stoke of good luck, the renown architectural renovator Viollet le Duc took Charles under his wing, and later hired him as a draftsman. This fortuitous turn of events would prove to be a double edge sword many years later.

His artistic intensity and talents would lead him into being admitted to the acclaimed  École des Beaux Arts in 1842, the same year his brother Gustave was born.  By 1848, at the age of 23, his architectural projects won the Prix de Rome, which offered him five years of foreign study in Italy.

Charles took up resident in the Villa Medici in Rome, which treated him to his first taste of luxurious surroundings, that he had never experienced before.  Besides studying and sketching on site the marvels of Roman architecture, he would occasionally go on excavation digs of Roman ruins.

Because he wanted more exposure to other styles, he requested and was given permission to study in Greece , as the French had recently opened a school in Athens. Charles recounted seeing the Acropolis for the first time with as much emotion and glorious reverence to  stature and beauty that he would incorporate into his own future creations.

The power and beauty of Corinthian columns must have touched a deep artistic chord in his psyche, along with Greek mythology that he would later weave into the Paris Opera house.  He loved hands on experience in these ancient ruins, as if he was soaking up the remnant energy of the master builders long before his time.

Along with an archeologist, he assisted in the excavation of the Temple of Aegina. He then traveled to Constantinople to savor and marvel at the Byzantine use of domes and spirals.

His return to Paris, ended up being too stressful, perhaps not only because of the counter-culture shock, but the realisation that his formal studies had come to an end and he was now expected to perform professionally.

He ended up having what was recorded as “a nervous breakdown” that required being hospitalized over a year and half.  At that time, he also started to have obsessive worries of having serious and grave diseases, which ended up plaguing him the rest of this life.

After his hospitalization, he found a job working as a governmental architect for the 5th and 6th arrondissements of Paris. In 1858, he married Louise Bary, a woman, who would become his center of gravity and provided the much needed solace for the rest of his life.

Ironically their apartment  at 90 Blvd Saint Germain overlooked the Roman thermal baths of the Cluny Museum. Life took on the trimmings of middle class success, such as dinners for friends, and attending concerts and operas.

Friends described him as a bon vivant and open hearted guy who loved to play the piano and write and sing his own operettas.   Paris was in the mist of being revamped by Barron Haussmann, whose massive urban renewal would change the physical outlay  of the city.

Besides gutting slums, and creating wide and sweeping avenues, that required demolition of many houses, he was charged with creating a new neighborhood around the future site of the new Paris Opera , as the original one was destroyed by fire.

This was during the Second Empire with Napoleon III in power.  He launched a contest to find the winning design for the future opera house.

Charles Garnier finished 5th, out of 171 applicants, which allowed him to compete in the second and finale round.  That was surprising enough, that a young and relatively unknown architect even placed into the finalist circle.

Empress Éugenie had favored and pressed to have her friend Viollet Le Duc win the competition.  Against all odds , Charles Garnier was announced the winner in 1861, who was as shocked as the whole artistic community of Paris.

The jury cited his proposition as having “rare and superior qualities”.  Despite the allegorical acclaim, the Empress in meeting Charles, rudely and critically complained  about his design, saying “What is this, it’s not a style, it’s neither Louis 14, nor Louis 15, not even Louis 16”!

Taken back, Charles quickly replied, “but Madame, its Napoleon III”.  Excavation started in the fall of that year, and that is when monumental challenges began for Charles.

The spot chosen in the 9 th arrondissement of Paris was already known to be slightly swampy, but when non stop water started sprouting up, it was discovered that underneath they had struck a phreatic lake. Pumps worked around the clock , but to no avail.  Undaunted, Charles conceived of an ingenuous idea to work along with mother nature, rather that trying to conquer it.

He constructed a huge concrete cistern to contain the water,  that with the weight of the water, would also would add stability to the whole structure.  Despite on going criticism, mostly from his former mentor Viollet le Duc and increasing costs, Charles doggedly persisted.

Three years after construction had begun, Charles and Louise lost their only son at the age of two years and a year later his wife suffered a miscarriage.   Despite the monumental grief, he persisted until construction came to a halt during the Prussian siege of Paris from 1870 to 1871, during which he and Louise sought shelter in the parts of the Opera already covered.

In 1872, Louise gave birth  to their second son Christian. Resumption of the work necessitated Charles to make several more demands for increased funding, which brought on more criticism and pressure for completion.   He also found out that his only sibling, Gustave, who oversaw the work, only when Charles had to be away had been stealing monies from the opera house fund, that he had squandered away in frivolous drunken pursuits.

On the 5th of January, 1875, the doors finally opened with a lavish gala and a standing ovation for its creator, Charles Garnier.  The majority of reviews were overwhelming with praise for the glory he had brought to the city of Paris.

Fame and fortune finally raised him into the circle of celebrated personalities and dignitaries of the time.  He was commissioned to do the opera house at Monte Carlo, and the Observatory of Nice.

He and Louise thought leaving Paris would be good for him, after all the enduring stress and they constructed a villa in Bordighera, on the Ligurian coast of Italy.  Though he spent most of the time there, but kept the  apartment in Paris, to which he would often return.

Though life was idyllic in his new villa by the sea,  he still had episodic  bouts of severe depression and anxiety.  Totally unfounded doubts around his professional  capacities taunted him and he continued to constantly believe he had contracted a severe illness.

Towards the last years of his life, he discovered that his only remaining child had contracted tuberculosis, and was not responding to treatment.  On August the 3rd, 1898, Charles Garnier died of a stroke in his apartment in Paris.

A month later his son, Christian, followed him to his grave, leaving Louise doubly devastated with grief. Both are buried in his family’s simple plot in Montparnasse cemetery.   Since his death, a gold leafed statue of Charles now adorns the front of Opera Garnier and the square is front is called Place Charles Garnier.

I was in awe during my recent visit by just seeing the  rotunde entrance foyer, which is a teaser of what lays ahead, before another hall leads you into the magnificent grand staircase.  At first sight, I was enthralled with the splendor of it all.

Sumptuous and palatial surroundings of marble, gold leaf, and statues, all shimmered  in the glittering light of huge crystal chandeliers.  Charles Garnier’s genius of interweaving architectural structure with paintings,  and statues are employed throughout the  rooms and the auditorium, whose ceiling was renovated by Marc Chagall.

The private loges are richly decorated with red velvet and offer much privacy, that has given rise to many tales of lustful pursuits of lovers who rent the whole loge.  The surrounding floors are all in mosaic line with velvet covered benches.

The several frescos depicting Greek gods and goddesses, along with astrological signs of the zodiac have fueled theories that Charles was a franc mason.  Though unproven, it certainly would be befitting of this masterful builder to have joined the ranks of masons who toiled with divine reverence in building Notre Dame.

The gigantic cistern is still full of water, now holding  a few fish fed by a machinist and can provide additional water in case of a fire. The cistern was one of the mysteries of Opera Garnier that inspired Gaston Leroux’s famous story and play The Phantom of The Opera.   Recently bee hives were added to the roof, offering a unique honey bearing its name.

Charles Garnier’s life is yet another testimony that despite humble beginnings, mental illness and painful losses, one can proceed to accomplish much in one’s life.  Grief, depression, and anxiety can hinder and slow us down, but with passion and support, these shadowing challenges can be navigated around, much like Charles did with that troublesome underground lake.