Célestins, Théâtre de Lyon

This guide to the Celestins theatre in Lyon follows architect Gaspard André, thirty-three years old when the city asked him to rebuild a playhouse that had already burned down, and his decision to raise the whole auditorium on cast iron rather than timber in 1874. It traces the borrowed ideas he drew from Charles Garnier's Paris Opera and a Geneva theatre, the 1877 opening, and the fire three years later that sent him back to the same drawings. Listen for what the guide says about the stage machinery rising above and running beneath the room you're standing in.