[serious classical music]
[fire sounds]
Female Narrator: These two paintings show very different perspectives on the fire of June 8, 1781 that gutted the opera house of the Palais-Royal in Paris. In the large nocturnal scene, we see the blaze at its most ferocious, with flames that reportedly shot 300 feet up into the sky. One eyewitness compared the conflagration to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which would have been the worst catastrophe an 18th-century person had heard of.
Male Actor with French Accent: “I never saw a more perfect image of Vesuvius or Etna…. From up close, the spectacle of the fire was horrifying. What power nature has through this terrible element! How frightening a blazing volcano must be!”
Female Narrator: The smaller painting shows the morning after the fire. A fashionably-dressed crowd has gathered in the Palais Royal’s gardens, gawking at the smoke still billowing out from the remains of the opera house, although its burnt-out shell is hidden from view by the palace itself. They’re viewing the aftermath from a safe distance, no doubt with a sense of relief - and perhaps a guilty shudder of excitement.
[music ends]
