The Paris Opera Room (Opera Garnier), 1907 (postcard)

The Paris Opera House (Opéra Garnier), postcard sent in 1907. On December 24 of this year, earthworkers exhume a corpse in the basement of the building. A news item that feeds the rumor of a curse attached to the building, as well as the legend of the “Phantom of the Opera” from which Gason Leroux will draw a successful novel series. In 1875, a journalist in the newspaper “La France Illustrée" described the Opera's great hall in this way: “it lacks harmony in the proportions of certain ornaments”, with boxes that “resemble niches” and a chandelier “of a somewhat barbaric magnificence.” This light fixture, he says, “does not illuminate the room enough”... and fortunately because “if all that gold reflected too much light, it would result in an almost painful flicker”!