Dance Class at the Opera

Dance Class at the Opera, painted in 1872 and now at the Musée d'Orsay, is a major early work in Degas's ballet series and one of the first to fully realize his approach to depicting the rehearsal room world. It shows a dance examination supervised by Jules Perrot — the celebrated nineteenth-century ballet master whose presence in Degas's works lends them documentary authority — with dancers awaiting their turn to perform before him. The work was exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, establishing Degas's identity as the painter of the Opéra. It demonstrates his already sophisticated approach to spatial construction and the observation of bodies in concentrated preparatory states.

The spatial construction deploys a high viewing angle that exposes the polished rehearsal floor and allows Degas to distribute figures across the entire depth of the room. The dominant diagonal of the floorboards creates a perspectival geometry that organizes the composition. Figures are caught in a variety of poses — standing, sitting, stretching, performing — that together convey the texture of the waiting, working atmosphere. Light is even and cool, entering from large windows typical of the Opéra's practice spaces.