This summer, on the evening of July 26, during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, Axelle Saint-Cirel, a 29-year-old mezzo-soprano draped in the colors of the French flag, climbed a ladder all the way up to the glass roof of the Grand Palais, the century-old Paris monument.

Amid a sudden downpour, before tens of millions of television viewers, Saint-Cirel delivered a pitch-perfect performance of the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” miraculously avoiding any wardrobe malfunctions or makeup smears, even though she was drenched by the end of her performance. When she was finally off camera, she recalled in a phone interview, she allowed herself to blink — and felt a trail of mascara dribble down her face.

Saint-Cirel described the experience as transformative.

“As a monument, the Grand Palais has changed my life: It has allowed me to have a vision of the world that’s so much bigger than the one I had before,” Saint-Cirel said. “I’m a very ambitious person. I work very hard. But there are so many artists who work very hard, and who don’t get opportunities such as this one.”

When she walks past the Grand Palais nowadays, she reflects. “I can’t believe that there was a human being on top of it, and that human being was me,” she said.

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