Edgar Degas Declared the Opera His ‘Laboratory.’ An Exhilarating Paris Show Reveals How It Became His Greatest Muse.

One has only to stand amid the gilded splendor of Paris’s Palais Garnier, with its red velvet chairs and sculpted balconies, its chandelier lights and shimmering reflections, to imagine the affluent and unabashedly exhibitionist patrons for whom this 19th-century landmark was intended: the bourgeoisie of the Second Empire. The flamboyant style of Emperor Napoleon III suited this newly rich public that—notwithstanding the venue’s main attraction, French lyric opera in its ascend