It was quickly decided to separate it and to build it in the Bastille area of Paris, a relatively working-class district that also evoked the French Revolution and was a traditional starting or ending point for demonstrations.

It was said that the jury, who—as it is common with architectural competitions—did not know the names or track-records of the entrants, mistakenly assumed the design was by the distinguished American architect Richard Meier.

Construction began in 1984 with the demolition of the gare de la Bastille train station, which had opened in 1859 and closed in 1969, and where art expositions had been held thereafter.

President Mitterrand remained personally involved throughout the building process, to the point that the planning team referred to him to decide on the seats’ colour following internal disagreement.

A semi-staged gala concert, directed by Robert Wilson under the title la Nuit avant le jour (The Night Before the Day), was conducted by Georges Prêtre and featured singers such as Teresa Berganza and Plácido Domingo.

In 1987, conductor Daniel Barenboim, who had previously led the orchestre de Paris, was hired to become the house's first Artistic Director, and began planning the first seasons.

This decision proved extremely controversial in the artistic field: Patrice Chéreau backed off the staging of the inaugural gala, composer Pierre Boulez resigned from the Board of Directors, and Herbert von Karajan and Georg Solti, along with several other prominent conductors, signed a letter of protest and called for a boycott of the opéra Bastille, canceling their own concerts there.

This made the search for a new artistic director difficult; in May, Bergé was finally able to announce the appointment of Korean pianist and conductor Myung-whun Chung, then young and practically unknown in France.

As early as 1991, a few of the 36,000 Burgundy limestone panels covering the facade began to fall, which led to the installation of safety nets over some external walls in 1996; they were dubbed "condoms with holes" by the disgruntled Director.

[5] Several major alterations had to be carried out in the following years, including that of the soundproofing structure and adjusting the orchestra pit's acoustics; each change proved complex and sometimes involved court proceedings to determine who was responsible.

The theatre is "surmounted by the opaque cube of the stage building and wrapped in gridded walls of glass… the Opera stands sociably open to the world outside, whereas the foyers, with their broad overview of the city, have the slick, impersonal look of an airport lounge.

Although a monumental external staircase leading to the first-level foyer and a direct underground access from the Bastille subway station to the entrance hall were built, they were eventually closed.

This modern design has been controversial ever since the house's opening, with part of the audience preferring the elaborately ornate and gilded decoration of the traditional Palais Garnier.