Second French Empire

The Second French Empire, the authoritarian regime of Napoleon III that lasted from 1852 until its collapse in 1870, is the political and historical frame within which the Paris Opera House was conceived and its construction begun. The novel's own account of the building's history makes clear that the Opera was "commenced under the Empire and finished under the Republic," a formulation that captures the way the regime's ambitions shaped the project from its inception, even as the building's completion would belong to a different political era. The Empire's fall in 1870, in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, interrupted the construction work at a critical moment and subjected the unfinished structure to a series of unexpected uses that would leave their mark on the building's history and, indirectly, on the story of the Opera ghost.

The Empire's Architectural Ambitions and the Opera's Design

The decision to build the new Opera House was made in 1861, during the height of the Second Empire, and the regime's taste for monumental display is evident in the scale and splendor of the design. The building was intended to be the most complete and beautiful opera house in the world, and its plans included elaborate provisions for the imperial household. The section of the building set aside for the use of the Emperor Napoleon was to have included an antechamber for the bodyguards, a salon for the aides-de-camp, a large salon and a smaller one for the Empress, and hat and cloak rooms. Moreover, there were to be, in close proximity to the entrance, stables for three coaches, for the outriders' horses, and for the twenty-one horsemen acting as an escort, as well as a station for a squad of infantry of thirty-one men and ten cent-gardes, and a stable for the horses of the latter. A salon for fifteen or twenty domestics was also planned. In total, the imperial entrance was designed to accommodate about one hundred persons, fifty horses, and half-a-dozen carriages. The fall of the Empire suggested some changes to these arrangements, but ample provision still existed for emergencies, a detail that underscores how deeply the imperial conception was embedded in the building's very structure.

The Interruption of 1870 and the Building's Wartime Uses

The events of 1870 interrupted work on the Opera just as it was about to be prosecuted most vigorously, and the new building was put to new and unexpected uses. During the Siege of Paris, the Opera House was converted into a vast military storehouse and filled with a heterogeneous mass of goods. After the siege, the building fell into the hands of the Commune, and the roof was turned into a balloon station from which incendiary proclamations were launched. The damage done, however, was slight, and the building survived these upheavals to be completed under the Republic. This period of military and revolutionary use is not merely a footnote to the building's history; it also explains the existence of certain features that play a crucial role in the novel. The secret passage known as the Communists' Road, through which Erik and later Raoul and the Persian move, was contrived at the time of the Paris Commune to allow jailers to convey prisoners to dungeons constructed in the cellars, and the Federates made a starting-place at the top for their balloons and a state prison at the bottom. The Empire's fall thus indirectly created the very labyrinthine underground world that the Opera ghost would later make his kingdom.

The Empire's Legacy in the Completed Building

Although the Second Empire fell before the Opera was finished, its influence persisted in the building's final form. The grand stairway, the foyer de la danse, and the imperial entrance all reflect the monumental aesthetic of the imperial period, and the building's completion under the Republic did not erase the marks of its imperial origins. The novel's description of the Opera, drawn from an 1879 article, emphasizes that the building was commenced under the Empire and finished under the Republic, and this dual heritage is visible in the way the building combines imperial grandeur with republican practicality. The Empire's architectural ambitions, including the lavish provisions for the Emperor's private entrance, left a permanent mark on the Opera's design, even though the regime itself had vanished before the building was completed. The Opera House thus stands as a monument to an empire that did not survive to see its greatest cultural project realized, and its subterranean passages, born of the Empire's violent end, became the setting for the novel's central drama.