Opéra (Rostral Column)
Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879)
c. 1875
- Medium
- albumen print from wet collodion negative
- Classification
- Photograph
- Dimensions
- Image: 37.7 x 26.7 cm (14 13/16 x 10 1/2 in.); Mounted: 35.4 x 26.7 cm (13 15/16 x 10 1/2 in.); Matted: 71.1 x 55.9 cm (28 x 22 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Photography
- Credit line
- Purchase from the Karl B. Goldfield Trust
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
In the 1800s, gas lamps replaced the oil lights. When Napoleon III commissioned a new opera house in Paris in 1860, it was surrounded by a “Ring of Light,” including this column with three gas streetlights. The opera house became the setting for Gaston LeRoux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, which inspired the 1976 musical and 2004 film.
