Description
Original size: 45 cm x 56.5 cm
Painting style: Impressionism
Original technique: Oil on canvas
Located: Musée d’Orsay, Paris (inv. RF 2417)
The Orchestra at the Opera – Edgar Degas
A view into the orchestra pit from the stalls – that is, from the place a spectator normally looks straight past. In the middle of the foreground sits a bassoonist in black tails with a white bow tie; the bassoon rises diagonally across the canvas like a dark line. Our oil painting on canvas keeps exactly that unusual choice of vantage point.
The bassoonist in front
Around him the heads of the players stand in a dense row, one behind the other, with no gap between them. At the upper right the neck of a double bass rises, and at the lower right a balding head turns into the dark. The faces are worked to different degrees: some are portraits, others only dark shapes that hold the row together.
The edge that takes the dancers’ heads
The upper edge of the picture cuts off the stage. We see only the dancers’ legs and the lower hems of pink and blue-green skirts; the heads are severed by the format, so they are left without faces. Along the bottom runs the dark rail of the pit, closing the scene and keeping the viewer outside it.
The opposite of what is expected
The cut is deliberate: Degas puts the musicians in front and pushes the ballet to the edge – the opposite of what a visitor would expect from an opera scene. The same players seen close up carry Orchestra Musicians, and dancers with their faces the Ballet Dancers in the Wings. The canvas measures 45 x 56.5 cm and is in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Our version
Our version is a hand-painted oil painting on canvas. Every canvas is painted individually, in the size and frame you choose. The painter works from the original with brush and oils, so the strokes and the layering stay visible – the part a print cannot reproduce.
