ggnga

I just realized this weekend that I missed Giselle at Opera
Garnier for Oct. Was so heartbroken. Did get ballet tx Nov. 12 for self, son and dil. Had to pay Cat 1, 1 loges de face, hope these are good seats. However I saw Joyaux a few yrs ago. I would love to see Giselle at Theatre des CE. Thank you for this info. I will google it.

gg

ggnga

Well, just not meant to be. Theatre des CD is sold out too. I will go to Opera Garnier a couple of times and see if I can pick up a return since I will be there a month.

Thanks

gg

MademoiselleFifi

ggnga (are you the same person as goldwynn?),

It's a 2-hr train ride away from Paris, but with a whole month maybe you would be interested in this? http://www.lepoint.fr/culture/2009-0...e/249/0/343176

cristeen

This is all fabulous information. Thank you. I am in Philly on the east coast, so I will be getting up early for my tickets.
Apres_Londee - will look into that ballet. It would be wonderful. We're not there for very long, so the events to choose from are limited.

goldwynn - If you will be there in October, and maybe you already know, there is the Nuit Blanche in Paris. I believe I saw it is October 3rd this year. It sounds so fun.
"The Night When Art and Culture Reign Until Dawn:
First launched in 2002, Paris Nuit Blanche (White Night) has become a hotly-anticipated annual celebration of all things art and culture in the city of light. Attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, Nuit Blanche sees countless Paris galleries, museums, city halls, and even swimming pools open their doors all night to visitors-- with free entry. Elaborate light installations, edgy performances, concerts, and unclassifiable happenings of all sorts await."

goldwynn

Thanks for the heads-up Christeen on Nuit Blanche. I noticed that on the events calendar when I was booking my appartment for the month. I will arrive the 1st of October, but am heading directly north to Normandy and the Canadian War Cemetery just outside of Caen. Won`t be back into Paris until Monday afternoon and the event is long over. I wish you luck in getting your tickets of choice. Don`t forget to open those extra windows for more choice in seating.

toneyks

We just got back from a visit to Paris & United Kingdom. I ordered tickets for the ballet and received the tickets at my home (Louisiana) in record time. Be sure to take heed of the "partial view" or other disclaimers when booking. It's true. I sat thru the whole ballet with only a view of 1/8 of the right front stage! But the "non-contiguous" wasn't a problem. We had three seats in the same box (2nd loge). So worth going to--if only to see the inside of the opera house!

cristeen

Too bad about missing Nuit Blanche. It sounds very fun. Hope you enjoy your Normandy and Caen visit.
I will definitely use the multiple window tactic. Thanks. I rented Platee from Netflix. It should be here tomorrow. toneyks, thanks for that advice. I will make note there as well. Now I'm almost as excited for Sept. to try to get my tickets as I am for December to see the Opera. I will post, hopefully, my success.

goldwynn

Toneyks ......... for those not fortunate to attend a production at Palais Garnier, there are tours of the building almost daily. I think I noticed the admission is around 8 Euro ..... they are not escorted as far as I know.

cristeen

Watched the DVD of the opera last night. Now I'll have a better idea of what I'm listening to.

Southam

Another venue for opera in Paris is Theatre Chatelet, a venerable theatre offering alternatives to the two "national" opera houses. In recent times it has presented the new opera based on the movie The Fly, as well as the ballet Edward Scissorhands. In May it housed the revival of the opera Cyrano, with Placido Domingo. The great man's name was buried in the credits -- my opera-going friends didn't know he was performing -- so getting a ticket was relatively easy. Chatelet sends out lively newsletters; see www.chatelet-theatre.com

cristeen

Hoping opera advisors are still here. ;O)
Now we are trying to decide on our tickets for Platee before they go on sale tomorrow in the middle of the night.
We are considering going on a Tuesday night the 1st week this Opera opens at Garnier. Do you think if we did not pre-order tickets, there would be any chance of purchasing at the box office or a ticket office in Paris that week for this show? Do they usually sell out?

yk

Why wait if you want to see the performance? Why risk it being sold out?

cristeen

Not sure dh really wants to see it. Never been to Opera before. Would rather see something more familiar. I think once we get there he'll want to go, but right now he's not so sure. We'll see. I guess.

easytraveler

cigdemak: the best thing to do is to contact some of the large hotels in Paris and ask for the help of the concierge desk.

Good luck!

fridayfan

I'm in the midst of planning our trip to Paris for this autumn (Sept 26 to Oct 13) and really hope to see The Marriage of Figaro while there.

With all the help on this thread I was quite confident that I could see my way through the booking process. Wrong!

I'm getting blocked by the mandatory field for Postal Code/City. I've tried every permutation I can think of (I'm Canadian) and have yet to find the magic formula.

If anyone can help I'd be most thankful.

Ackislander

Try just putting in a random post code from Paris. You can eventually print your tickets online.

What a friend wrote about the experience of buying online from the US:

Well, we have tickets to see Louisa Miller on April 1!!!! And it only took 25 or 30 interactions with the Paris Opera electronically to achieve that:

-- establishing an account was relatively painless, but they provide you with a magic number which you are supposed to remember forever. Ha!

-- picking seats was fun! Their site has a diagram of the house coded with something like 7 or 8 sections, which maybe were supposed to indicate the relative desirability of sitting in each. Then there were 4 price categories. There was no indicated relationship between these two categories of information.

-- unlike most of the opera houses I've purchased tickets for recently, there was nothing that showed you what tickets were still available nor any way for you to pick your seats. Instead you had to tell them how many tickets you wanted a what price (and to a limited degree, what part of the house you wanted). So I said 3 at 90 Euros. The system then gave me 3 seats, but no information about where they were precisely. At the bottom of that page was a button saying "More selections available" Press it, and bingo, you're given 3 different seats. And I suppose you could work you way through the entire house, 3 seats at a time. I decided to just accept the first selection they gave me. I could not get back to that. In fact I reached the point where the system claimed it had NO seats available at my price (probably since each time it gave you a choice, it locked up those seats.) Deep experience with stupid systems taught me that I should just give it a rest, and at some point it would reset itself and have the seats available again. That proved to be right, so I ordered the original choice.

-- unwisely I chose to print my tickets at home. They want you to first test doing this. I was a good user and did so. Worked fine. Then I tried printing the real tickets. What got downloaded was labeled a PHP file, which is a computer program. After some back-and-forth over e-mail (it look a LONG search to find an e-mail address, of course) it was decided that the files just had the wrong file extension. So I changed PHP to PDF, and Voila! Tickets!

I think they're better at producing operas than selling access to same. We'll enjoy it I'm sure.

fridayfan

Thanks so much for your reply, Akislander.

I was rather concerned that the complications wouldn't end even when I made it past the first hurdle. By the end of the process your friend must have had every last hair pulled from his head. I hope the production compensated him for his efforts.

Now I'm wondering if I should brave the phone route instead, given that my French is less than rudimentary.

I will persevere.

Ackislander

Yes, and he is a computer expert. I should clarify that while the original 2009 post had to do with Opera Garnier, his post had to do with the Opera Bastille, where you are trying to get tickets. I am not even sure that Opera Garnier still has opera.

One nice thing about going to all that trouble: right before the performance we attended, the ushers went through and invited the audience to move into the better seats that remained empty! Wow! Everyone moves in the US, of course, but not on invitation. We were astonished. Another reason to love the French: you arrive late, Tango Sierra. Somebody from the cheap seats is sitting in the seat you bought!