PARIS OPERA’S FATE STILL UNDECIDED

The new Paris Opera is rising where the Bastille fell, but its future is at the mercy of French politics, which are far more complex now than when a mob stormed the infamous prison in 1789.

The previous Socialist government started the project at the Place de la Bastille, a shrine of the French Revolution, to symbolize bringing opera to the people and to spur development in the neglected east side of Paris.

Earlier this summer, however, the new conservative government’s culture minister ordered a temporary halt in construction while major changes were considered.

After touring the construction site in mid-July, the minister, Francois Leotard, announced that the opera would be built but costs would be cut by canceling plans for adjacent scenery workshops.

Four days later, Premier Jacques Chirac made his own tour and said there was no point in pursuing construction of an opera house, citing the “extremely onerous” expense of a project that has already cost 730 million francs ($105 million).

Chirac said opera productions would remain at the Palais Garnier, the ornate Paris Opera in the center of the city, and the main auditorium at the Bastille site, now about 25% completed, would be used for concerts and ballet.

That would seem to have ended the matter, but apparently it didn’t. Last week, a delegation of Socialist politicians met with Leotard and said he indicated a decision had not been made.

Disagreement between the premier and his culture minister is significant because both are seen as likely conservative candidates for the presidency when the seven-year term of Francois Mitterrand, the Socialist incumbent, expires in 1988.

Chirac has altered two other plans announced by Leotard: to sell a state-owned television channel to private investors and to call off the launch of a television satellite.

The Paris newspaper Le Matin, which supports the Socialists, published a front-page photograph of Leotard, looking disconsolate, with a giant headline: “Leo in the Dumps.”

It is still unclear when Chirac’s government will officially announce its plans for the opera, and it is not known whether Mitterrand will take a hand in the Bastille project’s defense and what authority the president might have to do so.

Since the conservatives won parliamentary elections in March, the nation has lived with an unprecedented arrangement under which the government and the powerful presidency represent opposite political views. The French call it “cohabitation.”

Some powers are clearly assigned to one or the other, but others are not.

An aide to Mitterrand, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the president thought Chirac’s plan would produce a building with the least cultural value at the highest cost, but Mitterrand was awaiting the final decision.

Carlos Ott, the Canadian architect who won a competition to design the new opera, said that any serious alterations would probably mean the house could not open on schedule.

The opening has been planned for July 14, 1989, the bicentennial of the storming of the Bastille at the start of the French Revolution.

Andre Malraux, culture minister in the 1950s, first advocated a new Paris Opera to replace the Palais Garnier, which opened in 1875.

The decision to build one was not made until 1983, when the Socialist culture minister, Jack Lang, said work would begin on “an opera more accessible to the people at prices they can afford.”

Ott envisioned a 2,700-seat auditorium, a smaller one that would be adjustable in size from 700 to 1,200 seats depending on the production, and scene-building workshops.

When the conservative government announced soon after coming to power that it would have another look at the Bastille project, dozens of leading French cultural figures signed a petition urging that construction proceed.

Modifying the project to serve as a home for both ballet and music would be a contradiction, Ott said, because the requirements of the two conflict.