Parterre Tables & the Balcony
The geometry of the room, from the woman who drew the seating plan by hand — where the sightlines are, and where they are not.
People imagine that the centre of the parterre is the best seat in the house. It is the most famous seat; it is not the best. The stage on Boulevard de Clichy is deep and wide, and the chorégraphie is built to be read at a slight angle — the famous high lines of the corde de ballet open like a fan, and a fan is best seen from just off its axis. Give me a side table in the parterre, left of centre, three or four rows back, and I will show you formations the centre table never sees.
The balcony is the connoisseur's answer, and I say that as someone who seated tens of thousands: the first row of the balcony is the finest sightline in the house for the ensemble numbers. You lose the tabletop intimacy — no silver bucket within arm's reach — but you gain the stage as the choreographer intended, the whole width at once, every pattern readable. When the dancers' families came, they asked for the balcony. That tells you something.
What to avoid, honestly: the extreme right parterre near the service door, where the waiters' ballet is charming for ten minutes and merely busy for ninety; and the tables tucked under the balcony overhang at the very back, where the ceiling sits low and the famous curtain loses its top half. We filled them nightly and nobody complained — but nobody wrote home about them either.
A word about sharing: the parterre tables are small and you will sit close to strangers, shoulder to shoulder on banquettes older than the war. That is the room. If you arrive wanting privacy you will spend the evening annoyed; if you arrive expecting company you may leave with friends. I have seen it go both ways, and the difference was never the table.
Last note: the tables are numbered but the room is alive, and the difference between table 42 and table 44 is smaller than the difference between arriving relaxed and arriving flustered. Trust the plan. Whoever is standing at the top of the stairs with it folded in her hand has thought about your evening already — I promise you; I trained half of them.
So, pressed for one answer — where would I put my own dearest guests? If it is your first visit: parterre, left side, mid-rows, close enough to see the dancers' faces and far enough back to take the width of the curtain. If you have been before, or if you love choreography as choreography: balcony front row, and do not let anyone tell you it is second-best because it is cheaper — the dancers' own families disprove that every season. And whatever the plan gives you, accept it gracefully: I laid those plans by hand for a quarter of a century and I can promise the logic inside them is kind. The room was designed by people who wanted every seat to love the stage. Some seats simply get to love it sooner.
