Welcome to the Opéra Populaire…

By Erin A. Craig

Crossing the Rue Scribe, I could feel the weight of a thousand eyes upon me, even from under the sweeping dome of my black umbrella. Hundreds of leering masks—both comedy and tragedy—wrapped along the frescoed reliefs of the Opéra Populaire’s façade and dozens of enormous copper statues, now green with patina, looked down from their rooftop parapets. Renown and his bucking steed, Pegasus. Apollo and his golden lyre. An entire pantheon of Muses with their bare limbs writhing around each other and to the heavens like the hair of Medusa. Every single one of their faces stared down directly at me, judging.  

I was very, very late.

A soggy morning, frantic and flustered, was not how I’d imagined this day beginning.

It was my first dress rehearsal as a member of the opera’s corps de ballet and I should have already been inside, in costume, and warming up in any of the theatre’s dozens of practice rooms.

A roll of thunder rumbled and the rain fell harder as the Populaire loomed before me like a glowering, imperious monarch. It soared storeys over the rest of the buildings in the 9^th arrondissement. Its front was all marble colonnades with a set of enormous staircases leading up to the imposing front doors.

My legs burned as I raced up those stairs now, silently berating myself on every tread. How could I have overslept, today of all days?

La Gioconda was the first opera of the new season and I’d stayed up far too late going over the tricky footwork in the “Dance of the Hours” again and again. I’d wanted today to be perfect. The head of the ballet, Madame Giry, had only just given me a position in the corps and I wanted to show her that I was worthy and that her trust has not been misplaced.

I shuddered as I imagined her noticing my tardiness.

Rather than hurry all around the block to the stage door in the back, I decided to take a shortcut. I zipped into the front entry, dripping rainwater onto the mosaic tiled floor. I gave the vaulted ceilings and bronze caryatids a cursory glance as I wondered which way would be the quickest route backstage.

Perhaps straight through the front of house….

I started up the grand staircase, which, in a few nights’ time would be full of well-dressed patrons, each weighed down with a king’s ransom of jewels—both real and paste—as they waited to be escorted to one of the many private boxes lining the theatre’s horseshoe-shaped auditorium.

It was such a lovely image, I paused to picture myself among the high society throng. The moment ran long as I wasted a full, precious minute, letting my eyes wander over the dozens of towering golden candelabras offering out a warm glow.

“I’m so sorry, mademoiselle,” a voice called out, booming so loudly throughout the marble splendor that I jumped. “I’m afraid the box office is closed today. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

Box office? I wondered in confusion before snapping back to reality. The opera! Dress rehearsal!

I turned and spotted—to my horror—the grey figure of Monsieur Lefèvre, the Opéra Populaire’s owner and manager.

I swallowed, hard.

“Oh,” I began, feeling like a butterfly pinned to a specimen board. Every bit of me was frozen in place except for my heart, which fluttered in a worrying rhythm. “No. I’m not here for tickets.”

He gave me a conciliary smile. “I’m afraid there are no tours today either.”

He took a step closer and I braced, waiting for the moment he’d recognise me.

“I’m not here for a tour either,” I stammered, cheeks burning.

Monsieur Lefèvre’s bushy eyebrows drew together as he searched for any other possible reason for my presence.

“I—I’m in the corps,” I offered in a rush.

“The corps,” he repeated.

“The ballet,” I clarified. “In the opera? I’m here for the dress rehearsal. I’m not a patron,” I reiterated, feeling myself on the verge of rambling. “I’m just a… just a dancer.”

His pleasant expression flattened in an instant. “Performers are meant to use the stage door,” he said. His voice was now cold and clipped.

Thunder rumbled outside and I watched as his nostrils flared.

“Very well,” he said and waved me off with a flick of his wrist as though I were nothing but a gnat. I took a timid step up the stairs and he let out a groan. “Not that way!” he snapped. “You’re sure to drop water all over the carpets. Do you have any idea how much it costs to clean them?”

My eyes darted around the hall as I tried to guess which direction would take me to my dressing room.

“The archway on the right,” Lefèvre said, sensing my plight. “Go past the bar, turn left at the statue of Pythia and you’ll see the doorway to the ballet stairwell. I assume you know your way from there?”

I nodded miserably.

“Go on then, girl,” he said, dismissing me. “Madam Giry will have your hide if she catches you sneaking in past call.”

He didn’t need to warn me twice.

I raced past an endlessly long hall of tied back burgundy curtains—each leading to an aisle for audience members on the orchestra floor—before spotting a brass sign welcoming patrons for pre-show and intermission refreshments. The statue of Pythia was just past it and I soon found myself in the familiar and far less ostentatious backstage section of the theatre.

Above me was the spiral staircase I took six times a day, jogging up five floors to the ballet’s rehearsal room. It was a large space, utterly empty save for a rehearsal piano and a line of barres against a wall of mirrors. There, the members of the corps de ballet practiced morning, afternoon, and night. The opera’s singers—the principals, comprimario, and chorus—had a similar rehearsal hall off the other spiral stairwell on stage right.

Scattered through the rest of backstage were individual practice rooms—I once heard Monsieur Lefèvre fret over the fifty pianos housed at the opera which were always in need of tuning—as well as three floors of dressing rooms.

The wardrobe department made up most of the fourth floor. I loved peeking in to marvel at the rows of costumes ordered on racks and to see the dozens of tutus housed aloft above them, airy and ethereal, like the ghosts of ballerinas past.

Properties and scenic pieces were housed under the stage. Madame Giry’s daughter—and my best friend—Meg had told me there were four basements beneath the opera, broken into vast storage bays. I’d never dared to venture into them. They sounded like a confusing labyrinth of old stone temples, gothic stained-glass windows, flying chariots, and paper mache mountains.

I’d heard rumors that three years before, one of the stagehands had wandered down in search of a set of wooden pistols needed for a production of Robert le Diable and never returned. Some on the crew claimed the man had quit and left Paris in the dead of night for adventures unknown, but others said he’d become lost in the basement and one day his bones would be mistaken for props.

Meg privately believed the man had stumbled into the lowest level of the opera, a whispered fifth basement said to have been created during the opera house’s construction when it was discovered that the ground was too saturated with run-off water from the Seine River. To keep the build from stalling to a halt, the architects designed a cistern to hold the excess water, creating a false lake before putting hundreds of tons of concrete, marble, and gilded statuary on top of it.

As if summoned by my thoughts, Meg came hurtling down the stairs, already dressed and wearing her wig.

“Christine!” she hissed before glancing to the upper levels, her blue eyes wide and searching. “Mother hasn’t noticed you’re late yet, but she will if you don’t hurry up. I’ll help you!”

She all but yanked out my arm as she pulled me into the maze of white hallways leading to the corps de ballet’s dressing room.

Within minutes, I was stripped of my gaberdine dress and shimmied into a pair of tights, a corselette, and a full romantic tutu in a soft shade of yellow. Meg worked feverishly, jabbing pins into my wig as I laced up my bodice, before she plopped a floral wreath onto the fake hair and dragged me to the stage.

Rehearsal had not quite yet begun.

I could hear our conductor, Maestro Messenger, giving notes to the semi-circle of principal singers lining the lip of the stage as the orchestra settled into the pit.

I ground the tips of my pointe shoes into the rosin box hidden just offstage in one of the wings before testing the shoes and giving the loft space above me an appreciative glance.

Dozens of canvas drops hung above us, ready for flyman to run them in and out as the opera changed scenes.

“Dancers!” called out Madame Giry. “To the stage, please!”

Stepping out from the wings, we were instantly transported into a courtyard in the Doge’s palace, decorated for Carnival.

The stage was an enormous playing space, nearly sixty meters wide. Stagehands bustled about, arranging the last of the garden benches and greenery needed for La Giaconda’s first act.

Madame Giry began to go through a list of notes from our last rehearsal. I straightened my spine and stretched my hips, warming up as best as I could without drawing her eye. The anxiety which had been thrumming through me all morning, setting my teeth on edge and making my limbs feel jittery, had begun to ease. I’d made it onstage. I was dressed. And I—

“Christine Daaé!” Madame’s voice was as sharp as razors. “You were a full meter too far downstage during the adagio last night. It threw off the entire line. While the principals are wrapping up, we will run it, counts only.”  

Everyone hurried to their positions and fell into the dance as Madame Giry began to mark through the music, clapping her hands for our beats.

I finished my piece and sank to a low bow as we watched two of the soloists begin a pas de deux.

I knew I was meant to keep my eyes on them, reveling in their prowess, but I couldn’t help but scan the auditorium instead.  

During a performance, all the house gas lamps would be lowered and we wouldn’t be able to see a bit of it past the bright stage lights but now, every sconce was turned on high and an ocean of red velvet seats glowed before us. Four levels of box seats curved round the auditorium, with hundreds of more chairs along the orchestra level. Earlier in the week we’d been told that opening night had already sold out. Over two thousand patrons would fill the grand house to watch us.

The thought sent shivers of anticipation through me.  

High above the orchestra, shining with bright bronze and the lustre of three hundred and forty lights, hung the chandelier. Golden lyres ringed its upper most layers and ropes of faceted crystals sparkled with quiet elegance. It was said to be one of the largest chandeliers in all of France, weighing over seven tons. It seemed to defy both logic and gravity as it hung over the house, held by a single golden chain. Meg had told me though that it was all an illusion. There was an elaborate system of counterweights, with all the mechanisms hidden away above the plaster dome, so that the chandelier could be lowered to the floor for yearly dusting and repairs.

Madame Giry clapped her hands just as Maestro Messenger ended his notes. A stage manager rushed by, calling for the company’s opening positions, and Meg and I hurried back into the wings.

“I can’t believe we’ll be dancing in front of so many patrons in a few days,” I admitted, stealing one more peek at the house as the front lights lowered.

“Hmm?” Meg asked, distracted. She was staring at the two soloists still onstage, getting final directions from her mother.

“Opening night,” I reminded her. “The sold out house.”

She shrugged, her eyes still fixed on Rosalie, this season’s prima ballerina. “It won’t truly be a sellout.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

Meg pointed to one of the boxes on the first balcony, closest to stage left. “Box Five. It’s never sold.”

I peered at the box in question curiously. There didn’t seem to be anything special about it to mark it unique from the others which surrounded it. There were the same matching set of four chairs and the same drawn burgundy curtains that graced every box at the opera. “Does Monsieur Lefèvre use it for his seats?” I guessed.

Meg finally tore her gaze away from Rosalie and gave me a funny little look. “Are you joking, Christine? Box Five,” she said, pointing at the seats as though it should have been obvious. When I shrugged, she let out a laugh of disbelief. “That’s the box they save for the Opera Ghost.…”