About this work
The canvas divides into three distinct horizontal zones: at the bottom, the public space of the theatre; in the centre, the pit where the musicians sit; and at the top, the lit stage — edged by footlights and crowded with headless ballerinas. It is that audacious cropping that arrests you first. The dark, dominantly black mass of the foreground figures contrasts sharply with the stage-lit dancers above, who are deliberately cut off at the shoulder — and, in comparison with the carefully finished musicians, are much more loosely brushed, conveying movement and the soft texture of tulle. At the centre of the pit stands Désiré Dihau, bassoonist and close friend of the artist, placed in the front row by Degas specifically to emphasise him — even though the bassoon was conventionally positioned behind the cellos and double basses.
The musicians are intently focused on their music sheets and the conductor before them , their white shirt fronts and instrument scrolls punctuating the surrounding darkness like a score made visible.
The portrait commissioned in 1870 by Désiré Dihau is a key work because it gave Degas his first taste of success — but crucially, because its composition foreshadows many of his later scenes.
As a portrait, the work shows Degas's attempt to modernize the genre: rather than the traditional, formal pose of the sitter in isolation, Dihau is portrayed in his usual environment, surrounded by other figures who are as strongly individualized as he.
It would be a mistake to read this as straightforward documentary realism: Degas rearranged the orchestra's seating and placed friends with no connection to the Opera among the musicians — every decision as deliberate as the painting's highly original framing.
During Degas's lifetime, this painting was never publicly exhibited — it was simply a gift to a friend. It entered the Musée d'Orsay only after Dihau's sister sold it to the French state in the 1920s, making its subsequent place at the heart of Degas's legacy all the more remarkable.
This is a painting that rewards a room with low, directional light — a study, a music room, or a dark-walled dining room where the contrast between shadow and brilliance can do its full work. Where Degas's work most often focuses on ballet dancers, here he shifts his focus toward the part of the performance the audience rarely considers: the orchestra pit. It speaks to the viewer who understands that the most interesting vantage point is never the obvious one — who finds the drama not on the stage but in the concentrated faces of those who make the
