An Evening in Paris: Opera, Jazz, and Hidden Stages

Come evening, Paris presents an almost cruel choice: the greatest density of stages in Europe, from imperial opera house to vaulted jazz cellar. Here is how we choose, and the ticketing secrets that change everything.

The great houses first. The Palais Garnier, at least once, for a ballet: it is the monument seen from the inside, Chagall ceiling included. The Opéra Bastille, the great lyric stage, is a fifteen-minute walk from the Jewel, and very affordable seats are released online every week at operadeparis.fr, including last-minute seats on the night itself. The Philharmonie is worth the journey out to La Villette for its acoustics alone; the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, more intimate, for the great recitals.

Our local religion is jazz. Paris has been its second homeland for a century, and the rue des Lombards (three clubs in fifty meters, a twelve-minute walk from the Jewel) programs the best of the European scene every night. The perfect ritual: book the 7:30 p.m. first set at the Duc des Lombards, dine afterward. No one ever thinks of it early enough — now you will.

And then there is confidential Paris after dark, the one we love best: candlelit chamber music at Sainte-Chapelle or in "our" Église Saint-Paul, the ciné-clubs of the Latin Quarter where the film is introduced before the screening, the readings in the bookshops of the Marais, the museums' late-night openings. To follow it all: L'Officiel des spectacles, two euros at any newsstand — the weekly print edition remains unbeatable, and the gesture is deliciously Parisian.

The art of the evening lies in how it closes: a last drink in a hushed bar of the upper Marais, or simply the Pont de la Tournelle at midnight, when the Eiffel Tower sparkles one final time. Then ten minutes on foot, and you are home. That is the whole difference between visiting Paris and living it.