Degas

The Musée d’Orsay’s autumn exhibition, Degas at the Opera aims to show the close connection between the Opera, as a venue and as a musical genre, and the painter’s artistic production. Degas quickly became a regular at the old rue Le Peletier opera house, before it burned in 1873. Here the painter was attracted to the dancers and their work as well as the regulars who haunted the wings. A rigorous observer of form and morals, he drew and painted them in their environment. Degas’s work at the Opera thus constitutes an impressive chronicle for anyone interested in this unique closed world, based as much on grace as on make believe and illusion. Divided into ten themed sections, the visit provides a better understanding of how Degas’s passion for the Opera led him to constantly renew the means of depicting it through his paintings, sculptures, drawings and engravings.