La Gaîté Lyrique: Private Tour

Today we tour Paris’s La Gaîté Lyrique, a nineteenth-century Haussmann-era theater reborn as a modern cultural mecca. Nearly 150 years after its initial construction as an opera house, La Gaîté Lyrique reopened in March following an €83m investment from the French government transforming the space into an awe-inspiring haven for digital art, music and film replete with HD screens and 3D computer-generated projections. Architect Manuelle Gautrand consulted a historian for the eight-year project, preserving the original façade, foyer and structural features while building an ultra-contemporary, seven-floor interior comprising concert halls, art exhibition spaces and more. “This is a holistic, humanistic project," says artistic director Jérôme Delormas, who adds, "Technology may be the horizon, but the human always remains at the center." Noted art director and photographer Michel Mallard (who created the graphic and digital identity for the space) shot La Gaîeté Lyrique for NOWNESS. “There is so much traditional art in Paris, dominated by these sleepy mammoths like the Musée d’Orsay and the Louvre,” says Mallard. “La Gaîté Lyrique electrifies a city which vitally needs it.”