Crimson & Navy & Rose

Navy (very deep, dark — the gilded, darkened auditorium of the Opéra Garnier in the minutes before curtain rise) and Rose (vivid, electric — the footlight glow and the most dramatically lit stage-edge color as the houselights dim and the curtain rises) create the most specifically Parisian operatic and the most dramatically theatrical cool-warm pair — the anticipatory darkness and the first footlight blush. Against Crimson's passionate velvet-curtain warm, this creates the most specifically Paris Opéra Garnier theatrical palette.

The palette is the visual world of the Palais Garnier — the Opéra Garnier — the most ornate and the most internationally celebrated opera house in the world (Palais Garnier — 8 rue Scribe, Paris — designed by the architect Charles Garnier — constructed 1861-1875 — inaugurated January 5, 1875 — the most elaborate example of Beaux-Arts architecture in France and the most immediately internationally recognizable opera house in the world — the setting of Gaston Leroux's 'The Phantom of the Opera' — 1910). The Opéra Garnier theatrical palette: the deep vivid crimson of the grand velvet curtain (the most immediately beautiful and the most specifically operatic element of the Garnier interior — the Grand Rideau — the main stage curtain — in the most vivid and the most deeply saturated crimson velvet — the most dramatically lit and the most monumental single element of the Garnier proscenium arch); the very deep dark navy of the darkened auditorium (the specific very deep, gilded-dark blue-black of the Opéra Garnier auditorium in the moments just before the performance begins — when the houselights have dimmed but the stage lighting has not yet fully risen — the most dramatically charged and the most atmospherically beautiful moment in the Garnier experience); and the vivid electric rose of the footlight glow (the characteristic vivid, electric rose-to-pink of the traditional operatic footlights — the upward-casting row of lights at the front edge of the stage — whose specific upward-casting direction creates the most dramatic and the most immediately theatrical facial lighting on the performers and the most electric rose glow on the front edge of the stage).