The opening of the Opera House

The new Paris opera house was inaugurated ceremoniously on the 5th of January, 1875, ending fifteen years of building work, marked by the political, economic and social upheavals of the end of the Second Empire, the 1870 war and the Commune.
The construction of an opera house in the new Western quarters, where shops and banks thrived, at the crossing of the Grands Boulevards, was an essential piece in the jigsaw of Haussmann's remodelling of Paris.
After the selection, in 1861, of Charles Garnier's project - he was then a young architect - the building works started immediately, but were soon slowed down by budgetary difficulties. The façade was finished on April 15th, 1867, for the Exposition Universelle (World Fair). The 1870 war and the Commune nearly condemned the unfinished building, a witness to the splendours of the Second Empire, symbol of the hated personal power. Yet a fire at the existing opera house of the Rue Le Peletier, on October 28th, 1873, made the rapid finishing of the building a necessity.
The opening night of January 5th, 1875, presided over by the Maréchal Mac Mahon, constituted a manifestation of recovered national pride and of the vitality of a country which had been smitten for a time. France stated its supremacy to the face of Europe in the presence of several heads of states. The wealth of the monument, so much criticised on other occasions, helped drive the point home.
On the other hand, the reception by the public, a complex mixture of representatives of the civil and military orders, was ice cold. Yet, after the performance, Charles Garnier was to get a prolonged and heated ovation.
Journalists, caricaturists, Boulevard theatre authors extensively covered the social whirl, while neglecting the artistic event.