Canopy of Color

Marc Chagall enjoys defying gravity.

In his painting, cows jump over moons, lovers float like lost balloons, roosters and angels hover like Technicolor constellations on the dome of a painterly planetarium. This kind of levitation has been stunning in dozens of paintings and murals but never more suitable than in his new ceiling for the Paris Opera (see opposite page).

That a modern artist should decorate such a 19th century shrine revolted many traditionalists. To them, the cherubs and rosy clouds of Jules-Eugene Lenepveu's academic fresco were perfectly at home in the Second Empire opera house. But one Frenchman disagreed--and he happened to be Minister of Culture Andre Malraux.

Canvas on Polyester. In Malraux's opinion, the original mistake was that the old ceiling had not been painted by a Delacroix, Renoir, Manet, Monet, Redon or Pissarro. Since none of them are alive, he redecorated his own way.

Neither he nor the Department of National Monuments, however, quite had the nerve to destroy Painter Lenepveu's original ceiling. It remains a few inches above Chagall's ceiling, which is made of polyester gores slung like taut sails within the giant gilt rotunda.

"I don't consider Malraux a minister, but a visionary," said Chagall. Once commissioned, he began with pastel sketches the size of dinner plates, then larger cartoons, which he transferred onto canvas at the Gobelin tapestry studios. To cover the 2,153-sq.-ft. circle, he used 440 Ibs. of paint and applied every bit by his own hand. The canvas was glued to the polyester panels and lifted into place. Chagall, who is 77, touched up the joints, sweating atop a 70-ft. scaffold. The whole job took him a year--and the Russian-born artist gave the masterpiece to France in gratitude for his life of artistry there.

Music Tent. Chagall kept flower arrangements near him while he worked, and his design soon took on the shape of petals, which blossomed into a dreamlike homage to opera and ballet. His favorite composer, Mozart, occupies half of the big blue gore with angelic nudes and a bird playing The Magic Flute; Chagallic vignettes of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov fill the rest of the blue space. On around the circle, clockwise, yellow-bedecked dancers pirouette to Adam's Giselle and Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Ballet is further honored in the red petal, with Stravinsky's Firebird and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe depicted near, of all things, the Eiffel Tower. Next, Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande swoon under a yellow angel.

Two more pairs of lovers, Berlioz' Romeo and Juliet and Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, coo near the Arc de Triomphe. With all its harmonic colors and winged grace, Chagall's soaring canopy is a lofty challenge to music.

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