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    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      A French Monument Remains Every Bit as Grand on Film

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      The Palais Garnier, which inspired the first “Phantom” in 1910, is silent at the moment, but it continues to hold the imagination.PARIS — Wearing heels and an off-the-shoulder evening dress, Emily Cooper arrives at the Paris Opera for a big performance. She hurries up the grand marble staircase, pauses to gape at the painted ceilings, and runs into a suave young Frenchman she knows.“Did you know they were performing ‘Swan Lake’ tonight? Is this a joke?” he asks her. “‘Swan Lake’ is for tourists.” After a terse exchange, Emily scurries off to take her seat in a velvet-lined opera box.The scene is from “Emily in Paris,” the popular Netflix series — one of dozens of productions for which the original Paris Opera building, the Palais Garnier, has provided a backdrop. In the nearly century and a half since its inauguration, the Garnier has been featured in everything from documentaries (Frederick Wiseman’s “La Danse,” on the Paris Opera Ballet), to live-action/animation movies (“Smurfs 2”) to motion pictures: Sofia Coppola’s 2006 “Marie Antoinette” and the 2018 biopic of Rudolf Nureyev, “The White Crow,” directed by Ralph Fiennes.The pandemic may have shut down house performances in the last year, but on-location shoots have continued, in accordance with strict Covid-19 protocols. Two movies have recently been filmed inside the Palais Garnier: “Couleurs de l’Incendie” starring the French actress Fanny Ardant, and “Le Ténor,” with the tenor Roberto Alagna.Jean-Yves Kaced, the opera’s commercial director, said the coronavirus pandemic had made it easier for the house to accommodate film and television crews. Under normal circumstances, the Garnier has a full slate of opera and ballet performances that cannot be interrupted by outside projects. In normal times, the building also welcomes visitors for daytime tours.“The absence of audiences at the moment is a sad reality, but it does allow us to be a bit more flexible in hosting outside productions,” Mr. Kaced said.With or without a pandemic, filming at the opera requires a hefty budget. A daylong shoot at the opera (for eight hours) costs roughly 30,000 euros (about $35,000), according to Paris Opera management. “All things rare are expensive,” said Mr. Kaced, adding, “Look at it this way: You don’t have to pay for set designs, and it’s less polluting!”Mr. Kaced said he had appeared in one production himself — “La Danse,” in a “supporting role,” a meeting-room discussion about selling sponsorship packages to American patrons.François Ivernel, whose company, Montebello Productions, produced “The White Crow,” confirmed that filming at the Palais Garnier was “not cheap,” and that the fee was not something to be negotiated, as is the case at other French cultural landmarks like the Louvre. “You take it or leave it,” he said.“The White Crow,” a biopic of Rudolf Nureyev starring Oleg Ivenko, featured three scenes shot at the Palais Garnier.Jessica Forde/Sony Pictures ClassicsMr. Ivernel listed three scenes in the movie that were shot at the Palais Garnier: the arrival of the Russian troupe, filmed in the grand foyer; a conversation between Nureyev and a French dancer, shot on the Garnier rooftop, with panoramic views of Paris; and shots of the performance hall, filmed from the stage. Filming of “The White Crow” coincided with the opera’s glamorous annual fund-raising gala, to which Mr. Ivernel was invited.The shoot was, on the whole, a “wonderful experience,” Mr. Ivernel said. Before filming, the team was allowed to spend three half-days backstage with the Paris Opera Ballet where, interestingly, Nureyev would become ballet director in 1983. They met dancers, watched rehearsals and visited the costume-making ateliers, where tutus hang from the ceiling. It was “all very useful for the director,” Mr. Ivernel said, “because it gave him a much better sense of what it was like to be a principal dancer,.”There was just one minor misstep, recalled Marie Hoffmann, who is in charge of rental of public spaces at the opera. While the crew was busy filming inside the opera house, Mr. Fiennes, who plays a ballet master, settled into a recently restored fauteuil, a period armchair usually kept behind a protective barrier. “We asked him, in the politest way possible, to give up the seat,” Ms. Hoffmann recalled.Filming inside the opera is a complex process. Before the pandemic, shoots had to happen at nighttime, when there were no more performances or visitors, and they were all-night affairs, running from 11 p.m. until 9 a.m., when the premises were cleaned for morning tourists.Because the building is a listed national monument, every corner of it is guarded and protected. As at Versailles and other French heritage sites, equipment cannot be placed directly on the floor: There must be a layer of protection such as a strip of carpeting. There are weight restrictions on camera equipment as well, and crews are followed everywhere by security.Have there ever been any accidents? “No, touch wood,” Ms. Hoffmann said.There has, however, been the odd anachronism.In the 2006 movie “Marie Antoinette” starring Kirsten Dunst, a masquerade ball scene was set inside the Palais Garnier, despite the fact that the building was built a century after the reign of Antoinette.Leigh Johnson/Columbia PicturesIn “Marie Antoinette,” the lavish masquerade ball scene is set inside the Palais Garnier. A masked Queen Marie Antoinette (played by Kirsten Dunst) twirls around a crowded dance floor — in the famous “Rotonde des Abonnés” (the circular hall under the stage), with its elaborate mosaics — and is later seen slithering down the opera’s curving marble staircase, flirting incognito with a handsome young count.There’s just one slight problem: The Palais Garnier was built a century after the reign of Marie Antoinette, who was executed in 1793. The anachronism is listed under “Goofs” in the Internet Movie Data Base: “The masquerade ball held in the Paris Opera is clearly seen to take place in the Palais Garnier in Paris, built between 1861 and 1875 during the reign of Napoleon III.”The Garnier also serves as the backdrop in the 1910 novel “The Phantom of the Opera,” by the French writer Gaston Leroux, who tells the melodramatic story of a disfigured musical prodigy who lives underneath the palace and kidnaps a glamorous young soprano.“Phantom” first captured the public’s visual imagination in 1925, in the film version of the novel starring Lon Chaney, and the story has been retold repeatedly, perhaps culminating in the 1980s stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.Oddly, none of the film adaptations of the novel are listed as having been shot on location in the Palais Garnier. Yet they have fueled a rumor that persists to this day: that there is a lake underneath the edifice.“When we take visitors around the basement area, they come expecting to see the lake,” Ms. Hoffmann said. “In fact, it’s a reservoir that’s the size of the main stage, and located right underneath it.”“We have no access to it,” she added. “It’s accessible only to Paris firefighters, who use it for diving training.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Rescuing an Off Off Broadway Theater With a Storied Past

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      Preservationists hope to save the 13th Street Repertory Company building, with a little help from the Underground Railroad. When Edith O’Hara, the mother hen and indefatigable leader of the eclectic 13th Street Repertory Company for nearly half a century, died last fall at age 103, the future became decidedly shaky for one of Off Off Broadway’s longest-operating stages.In an effort to ensure that it’s not the end of the run as well for the antebellum brick house where both the theater and Ms. O’Hara made their homes, preservationists are urging the city to grant landmark protection to the three-story Greek Revival structure.The city Landmarks Preservation Commission told an advocacy group in January that the quaint 1840s rowhouse with the intricate cast-iron portico at 50 West 13th Street was not distinguished enough to warrant landmark protection on its architectural merits, noting that further study was needed to determine the building’s “cultural significance within the context of Off Off Broadway theater.” Consequently, the group, Village Preservation, has dived into the archives to try to demonstrate that the building is a worthy cultural landmark based not only on its theatrical history but also on an intriguing, newly unearthed piece of African-American history involving a prominent 19th-century Black businessman and abolitionist.The new research “is very helpful and we have added it to our records,” Kate Lemos McHale, the commission’s research director, wrote the group on Feb. 24.A commission spokeswoman added in a statement to The Times that the city “is absolutely committed to recognizing Black history in the urban landscape,” which is why the agency recently launched Preserving Significant Places of Black History, “a world-class story map and educational tool.” She said that the city would “continue to review” 50 West 13th Street.Edith O’Hara, the leader of the 13th Street Repertory Company for nearly half a century, at the theater in 2006. Ms. O’Hara died last fall at age 103.Ruby Washington/The New York TimesA place of opportunity for generations of theatrical neophytes of varying talents, the quirky, no-frills 13th Street Repertory Company was an early stop for such performers as Richard Dreyfuss and Chazz Palminteri. “Line,” a one-act play by Israel Horovitz, ran there for more than 40 years, an Off Off Broadway record. And “Boy Meets Boy,” New York’s first hit gay musical, was first staged there in 1974, the brainchild of Bill Solly, an Englishman whom Ms. O’Hara had taken in and allowed to live upstairs from the theater.Whether the show will go on is unknown. The building is owned by White Knight Ltd., of which Ms. O’Hara’s three children collectively own a little over a third. The balance of the shares are owned in equal proportion by Stephan Loewentheil, a bookseller, and his ex-wife, Beth Farber. The O’Haras and Mr. Loewentheil previously fought a bitter, yearslong real estate battle that ended, in 2010, with an agreement that allowed Ms. O’Hara and her theater to remain in the building until her death. There is no provision for what comes next.The Thirteenth Street Repertory Company has been placed in the hands of its artistic director, Joe John Battista, who has vowed to continue making theater under the group’s name. But whether that will happen on 13th Street or elsewhere — and whether the building will ultimately be sold — depends on the outcome of an offstage drama.Jill O’Hara, one of Edith O’Hara’s two daughters, at the theater in 2017. Ms. O’Hara is a minority shareholder of the company that owns the building.John Taggart for The New York Times“It’s all still in the air at this point,” said Jill O’Hara, one of Edith’s daughters, who sits on White Knight’s board. “It’s a complex situation that’s not made any easier by the history with this guy,” she added, referring to Mr. Loewentheil.The building is managed for White Knight by Nate Loewentheil, the son of Mr. Loewentheil and Ms. Farber.“As someone who cares deeply about cities, I appreciate the history of 50 West 13th Street,” Nate Loewentheil said, “but the building has fallen into very significant disrepair over the past 15 years, so we are trying to figure out our next steps.” (Both his parents declined to comment.)Ms. O’Hara said that her mother believed that the building was once part of the Underground Railroad, the network of activists who helped enslaved African-Americans flee north to freedom before the Civil War. That belief has been perpetuated in local lore because a trap door in the theater’s dressing room leads to a hidden basement chamber unconnected to the rest of the basement.Although no evidence has emerged to support the Underground Railroad rumor, new research, performed by Village Preservation and supplemented by an independent historian and a reporter, suggests that the claim may not be outlandish.From 1858 to 1884, city directories and other records show, the house was owned by Jacob Day, a prominent African-American businessman active in abolitionism and other civil rights efforts. By 1871, Day was one of the wealthiest Black residents of New York City, according to The New York Times, with a net worth of more than $75,000, or around $1.6 million in today’s dollars.The Greek Revival house has an intricate cast-iron portico.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesThe building has fallen into disrepair, and its future is uncertain.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesAn 1880 issue of The People’s Advocate called Day “the fashionable caterer of East Thirteenth Street” and identified him as a leading member of “a colored aristocracy” in the city. “Beginning as a waiter, by economy and thrift after years of struggle he saved money enough to go into business himself,” the paper noted, adding that Day owned “several fine houses.”Newspaper articles appear to document Day’s involvement in civil rights causes over more than 30 years. In 1885, the year after his death, his efforts to further African-American self-determination were recognized in a history of Black Americans. “The Colored population of New York was equal to the great emergency that required them to put forth their personal exertions,” wrote George Washington Williams, spotlighting Day, along with his fellow Greenwich Village resident and abolitionist Dr. Henry Highland Garnet, for doing “much to elevate the Negro in self-respect and self-support.”Born in New York around 1817 to parents who were also born in the city, Day appears to have been publicly active in Black civil-rights efforts as a young man. Along with such prominent abolitionists as the New York publisher and Underground Railroad leader David Ruggles, a man named Jacob Day was among a group in 1840 that called, in the pages of The National Anti-Slavery Standard, for a “National Reform Convention of the Colored Inhabitants of the United States of America,” an effort to combat the colonization movement that aimed to resettle Black Americans in Africa.Day was also a prominent member and the longtime treasurer of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the city’s second oldest Black church, which moved to nearby 166 Waverly Place shortly after Day bought his house and place of business on 13th Street.Tom Calarco, the author of several books on the Underground Railroad, said that an 1852 article in The Standard suggested a strong connection between the church and leading Underground Railroad figures.The newspaper report detailed an anti-colonization meeting at the church that had been called by the Committee of Thirteen, a vigorous Underground Railroad organization. The Rev. John T. Raymond, the church’s pastor, was a member of the committee and served as president at the 1852 meeting.The entrance to the 13th Street Repertory Company, which was shuttered last March because of the coronavirus. Edith O’Hara lived upstairs until her death last fall, and tenants still occupy the building.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesDay was “a major leader of the Black community, and he was connected up with other important people that were in the abolitionist movement,” Mr. Calarco said. “We know for at least 26 years, he was still participating in these important meetings with people who were leaders of the movement, so you have to make that assumption that he, if not directly, was indirectly involved in the Underground Railroad.”Mr. Calarco also shared a document showing that in 1846, Day was one of a roster of African-Americans given land grants in the Adirondack region of upstate New York by Gerrit Smith, a major underwriter of the Underground Railroad.Mr. Calarco speculated that Day may have used his wealth to fund Underground Railroad operations, whose conductors were often pressed for cash. “They needed the money,” he said, “to pay for the food, to pay for the travel, to pay for the clothes, to pay for people who helped transport” fugitives on boats and trains.After the Civil War, with slavery abolished, Day worked to secure the vote for all Black people in New York State. In 1866, The Standard reported, he was one of a group that called for a convention to remove the discriminatory provision in the state constitution that barred Black people from voting unless they owned property valued at the considerable sum of $250. “The war of steel is over … but the war of ideas must go on until in this country true democratic principles shall prevail,” the group wrote, echoing today’s battles over voter suppression.In 1871, a year after the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution finally prohibited the federal government and the states from denying or abridging the right to vote based on race or color, a massive jubilee parade of Black citizens wended its way uptown from Washington Square, with throngs of Black and white New Yorkers lining the route. At a “grand mass meeting” at the Cooper Union, The Times reported, Day was among the officers who issued a resolution declaring that the 15th Amendment could only improve the lot of Black Americans if “the exercise of the ballot shall at once be made safe, and our right to exercise it be maintained by civil authority.”In 1880, when the Black civil rights leader Frederick Douglass spoke at a rally for the Republican presidential candidate James A. Garfield at the Cooper Union, Day was among the prominent citizens, Black and white, assembled onstage around him.During the period Day lived on 13th Street, the city’s largest African-American neighborhood, known as Little Africa, had developed nearby south of Washington Square, around Minetta Lane and Minetta and Bleecker Streets. The Abyssinian Baptist Church, whose finances Day managed, had moved to the Village to serve this population. So did the Freedman’s Savings Bank, an institution founded to help former slaves after the Civil War. Day kept an account at the bank, perhaps to support its mission.Reflecting on Day’s house on 13th Street, Sylviane A. Diouf, a historian of the African Diaspora who curated a digital exhibit called “Black New Yorkers” for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, said: “It’s important to preserve and show that there was an African and then an African-American presence in that area from the Dutch years and that they had institutions and businesses. It’s important to stress that, contrary to what people think, African-Americans didn’t just arrive in Harlem during the Great Migration, but they had a presence for 300 years before that.”By the late 19th century, fierce competition for housing from Italian immigrants was already pushing Black residents uptown from the Village to the Tenderloin district. And some of the lingering physical remnants of Little Africa were demolished in the 1920s by the extension of Sixth Avenue from Carmine Street to Canal Street.“Virtually all of the great institutions and landmarks and homes of leading figures of the 19th-century African-American community of Greenwich Village have been lost or highly compromised,” said Andrew Berman, the executive director of Village Preservation. “50 west 13th Street is one of very few remaining homes of a leading African-American figure, not just in business but in the civil rights arena, that is largely intact from the many decades that he lived and worked there in the 19th century.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More