The trouble started in 1962. France's culture minister then, André Malraux, was reportedly bored at a ballet at the Palais Garnier. He looked up at the classical ceiling and decided it needed a makeover. His friend Chagall sat beside him, so Malraux gave him the job.
Chagall worked in secret and for free for two years. He made 24 enormous, colourful wedge-shaped canvases that now sit over the original ceiling by Lenepveu. Beneath them, The Muses and the Hours of Day and Night remains painted in oil directly on the copper plates of the dome. The opera house, commissioned by Napoleon III, opened in January 1875 with European royals and political figures in attendance.
Carayon says he spent three years asking nicely, including two letters to President Emmanuel Macron. Now he has instructed a lawyer to take the fight to court. "The Lenepveu ceiling is classified as a historic monument and yet it hasn't been seen for 60 years and we have no idea what state it is in," he said. He argues Lenepveu was a star in his time and that Charles Garnier chose him personally.
Garnier designed everything down to the last door knob, and a minister's night at the ballet changed the ceiling anyway.