Mr. Ivernel listed three scenes within the film that had been shot on the Palais Garnier: the arrival of the Russian troupe, filmed within the grand lobby; a dialog between Nureyev and a French dancer, shot on the Garnier rooftop, with panoramic views of Paris; and photographs of the efficiency corridor, 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 entire, a “wonderful experience,” Mr. Ivernel stated. Before filming, the group was allowed to spend three half-days backstage with the Paris Opera Ballet the place, apparently, Nureyev would change into ballet director in 1983. They met dancers, watched rehearsals and visited the costume-making ateliers, the place tutus grasp from the ceiling. It was “all very useful for the director,” Mr. Ivernel stated, “because it gave him a much better sense of what it was like to be a principal dancer,.”
There was only one minor misstep, recalled Marie Hoffmann, who’s answerable for rental of public areas on the opera. While the crew was busy filming contained in the opera home, Mr. Fiennes, who performs a ballet grasp, settled right into a not too long ago restored fauteuil, a interval armchair normally saved behind a protecting barrier. “We asked him, in the politest way possible, to give up the seat,” Ms. Hoffmann recalled.
Filming contained in the opera is a fancy course of. Before the pandemic, shoots needed to occur at nighttime, when there have been no extra performances or guests, and so they had been all-night affairs, working from 11 p.m. till 9 a.m., when the premises had been cleaned for morning vacationers.
Because the constructing is a listed nationwide monument, each nook of it’s guarded and guarded. As at Versailles and different French heritage websites, gear can’t be positioned straight on the ground: There should be a layer of safety resembling a strip of carpeting. There are weight restrictions on digicam gear as properly, and crews are adopted in every single place by safety.
