The Paris Opera, seen from the inside, Les Echos Week-end

The Paris Opera is a golden subject for cameras. There are countless reports around the big shop on TV channels. Everything goes, the little rats of the ballet, the course of the stars, the “battle” of the Bastille Opera. And sometimes little scandals in a hushed world. The great documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman devoted an exciting film to the Paris Opera Ballet in his time. The principle of the American consisted in setting his goal, filming long hours and then, during the editing, giving meaning without a single comment. We can review this work on VoD sites. When the Swiss Jean-Stéphane Bron in turn pushes the doors of the Parisian house, he intends to cover music and dance, Garnier and Bastille, stars and young shoots.

“Embedded” in a way. He will follow an entire season concocted by Stéphane Lissner and, for dance, Benjamin Millepied. Except that it is on the eve of his shattering departure from the institution in 2016. Another event arises. Bron started filming in January 2015. He will stay there for as long as it takes. The attacks in Paris will thus upset the whole of France and the family of the Paris Opera as well. We thus see Lissner’s speech on the Bastille plateau just after the shock.

The real life

Suffice to say that this film is anything but a health walk. There is suspense, emotion, smiles too. And a face, that of singer Mikhail Timoshenko, almost unknown in the first days of filming. He then speaks our language poorly, but his enthusiasm, sometimes tinged with naivety, has marked many. When the latter meets one of his idols, the baritone Bryn Terfel, real life takes precedence over fiction.

The other stars of the film are undoubtedly the choir of the Paris Opera seeming to resist the will of the director Romeo Castellucci. Or this dancer coming out of the stage exhausted. Some, at the end of the film, criticized the director for relegating dance to the background. Which is not wrong. But what Jean-Stéphane Bron shows us, this backside of the decor, these little hands of hairdressing and even these young students as part of an awareness-raising operation, touches the heart. In the end, we regret that the Opera does not last an hour longer.