Opéra (Rostral Column) (c. 1875): Art, History and Details

Opéra (Rostral Column) (c. 1875) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the 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.

Object facts

• Title: Opéra (Rostral Column)
• Date: c. 1875
• Creator attribution: Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• 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.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2006.6

A detail from the museum

Paris is known as the City of Light because it was one of the first cities to install street lights—oil lamps in the 1660s.

Collection credit

Purchase from the Karl B. Goldfield Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hinson, Tom E. "Remembrance of Things Past." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 49, no. 9 (November 2009): 3-5.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.