"Théâtre Royal de Liège" Top 5 Page for this destination Liège Things to Do Tip by Nemorino

The Royal Theater, home of the Royal Opera of the Wallonia, is currently (as of 2011) being reconstructed and enlarged. So far it seems that the original building will be dwarfed by the new tower for stage machinery which is under construction at the rear.

The theater was originally built in 1816, so it had already been there for nearly a quarter century when Victor Hugo first saw it in 1840. Evidently he didn’t like it very much. In his book Le Rhin he wrote:

Liège no longer has its Dominican convent, that dark cloister with such a superb reputation, that noble edifice with such a proud architecture. Instead it has, at precisely the same site, a theater embellished with columns crowned with ornamental capitals in the style of Le Conte, where they play comic operas. The cornerstone of this theater was laid by Mademoiselle Mars.

You can almost hear the sneer in his voice when he mentions comic operas and especially Mademoiselle Mars, a prominent French actress of the Comédie Française in Paris whose real name was Anne Françoise Hyppolyte Boutet Salvetat (1779-1847).

Second photo: In front of the opera house is a statue of the composer André-Modeste Grétry (1741-1813), who was born in Liège and became an incredibly successful composer of comic operas in Paris. Today his operas are rarely if ever performed. Grétry was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, but fifteen years after his death his heart was allegedly removed and taken to Liège where it was placed inside this statue. (I wonder how much of the heart was still there after fifteen years of burial. Maybe it had been embalmed in some way? I’m always rather skeptical about this sort of story, but never mind.)

Address: Place de l’Opéra
Directions: GPS 50°38'36.37" North; 5°34'14.39" East
Website: http://www.skene.be/patricha/art/opera.html