Ballet at the Opera Garnier

Monday October 1. Most days, my schedule is pretty relaxed but today it seemed I was running from one thing to another!

A new month is beginning at the AF (we're now in level B2.4) and we have a new teacher, Antoinette Revier. She's quintessentially French: small, trim, short brown hair, probably in her forties but very gamine-like. She has just returned from vacation on one of the Green islands. She's very enthusiastic, energetic and exacting! We are starting a new unit on Le Tourisme. So we have lots of vocabulary to learn tonight and two exercises to complete.

After class, I meet Camille at L'Horizon to talk about the possibility of having "des cours particulieres" so we can work on things that are most problematic for me individually. We agree that he will come to my apartment once a week. He also gives me an assignment to complete before he comes on Wednesday. What am I? A glutton for punishment? I'm too old to be doing homework! But I love this, even when it's hard.

Camille is such a nice young man. He is 24, and teaching is definitely his calling. He has a trajectory all planned out, culminating in (he hopes) establishing his own school and developing his own methods of pedagogy. He also says that we are very lucky to have Antoinette as our teacher. She was one of his teachers during his training at the AF, and he loves her.

I dash home to change my clothes and have a little something to eat before setting off again for:

Opera Garnier. I emerge from the metro (Opera) and turn around to face a glorious sight. The Opera Garnier looking for all the world like an illuminated wedding cake, its gold statues shining brilliantly. And if the outside is breath-taking (even more so at night, I think, that during the day), the inside is even better. It's worth the price of admission to see the interior of the building alone. (Actually, you don't have to buy a ticket to one of the productions to see inside; there are tours every day.) "So much marble" (from a song in the show "She Loves Me"). Let me just say that there are little clusters of people everywhere taking pictures of the interior.


Because I bought my ticket on line, I have to figure out how to actually get it. First, I go to the box office, but turns out there's a different place to pick up tickets bought online that are deja regle. So I get myself there and collect my ticket with no problem.


I'm the the Second Tier of the loges. Box 34, Seat 6. Each box contains six little red, velvet-covered chairs (actually, the chairs are gold, the velvet is red). Other than the orchestra seats and a few rows at the very top, none of the seats in the entire house are in rows. All the rest of the seats are in boxes (loges). There are 5 tiers of boxes in a horseshoe shape from one edge of the stage around to the other. Another woman is in Seat 5 but there is no one else in our box, so just before the curtain goes up, we move down to seats 1 and 2 which are in the very front of the box! So we have now a great view of the orchestra, the stage and the Chagall ceiling.

The "curtain" is not a curtain at all but painted to look like a curtain. That sounds weird but it's actually quite stunning.

At intermission, I chat with the other woman who is in the box with me. At first, we speak French but later it turns out she's German so we switch back and forth between French and Fnglish. A lovely older french woman appears just before the second half but she refuses to let us give up "our" seats for her.


Wuthering Heights. Set: windswept tree; five layers of scrim; wind, shadows; flowers dropping down from the sky, then being swept away or gathered up by rope. Heathcliff's alter ego/bad spirit. Music. not at all a classical ballet but wonderful. very moving. very appreciative audience. at least 5 curtain calls. More on this later.

pedometer: 3821. periods of rain today but I was lucky and never got rained on.