Degas at the Opéra-National Gallery of Art
March 15, 2020
3:30 PM
New York Opera Society Singers:
Alisa Jordheim, Soprano
Vale Rideout, Tenor
Operatic excerpts to concurrently celebrate NGA’s Degas at the Opéra.
Free & Open to the Public, first come, first seated.
About the Exhibition
Degas at the Opéra is the first exhibition to examine the importance of the Paris Opéra to the artist’s work. The exhibition addresses the Opéra as an institution and Degas’s passionate attachment to it through his personal relationships with successive Opéra directors, composers, corps de ballet, singers, musicians, conductors, and subscribers. From the mid-1860s through his later work made after 1900, the Opéra was the focal point for the artist. He explored its different spaces (orchestra, stage, boxes, foyer, corridors, dance studios), and examined the people active in those spaces. Degas’s depiction of the dancer’s body from every angle, under strain or in moments of relaxed waiting, reveals the psychological truth of the moment and is remarkable for its modernity in representing the human figure.