Salle Le Peletier

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Théâtre de l'Académie royale de musique around 1821
Theater de l'Académie royale de musique - Grande salle
Performance of Robert le diable in the Salle Le Peletier, 1831
Rossini: Moïse et Pharaon 1827
View from Rue Le Peletier (around 1870)
Don Carlos - poster from 1867
Ballerinas of the Paris Opera Le Peletier (clockwise): Lise Noblet, Marie Taglioni , M lle Julia [de Varennes], Alexis Dupont, Amélie Legallois and Pauline Montessu, premiers sujets , 1831.

The Salle Le Peletier (sometimes referred to as Salle de la rue Le Peletier or the Opéra Le Peletier ) was the home of the Paris Opera from 1821 until the construction of the new Palais Garnier building in 1873.

history

The theater was planned and built by the architect François Debret on the site of the former Hôtel de Choiseul after the previous house, Théâtre National de la rue de la Loi , had been surrendered . Because of the many organizational and management changes during the existence of this institution, it had a number of official names. The most important were:

  • Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique (1821–1848)
  • Opéra-Théâtre de la Nation (1848–1850)
  • Théâtre de l'Académie Nationale de Musique (1850-1852)
  • Théâtre de l'Académie Impériale de Musique (1852-1854)
  • Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra (1854–1870)
  • Théâtre National de L'Opéra (1870–1873)

When the nephew (and heir to the throne) of King Louis XVIII, Charles Ferdinand, Duc de Berry, was fatally injured on the night of February 13, 1820 in front of the former theater of the Paris Opera, the Salle de la rue de Richelieu, the decided König to demolish the theater in order to have a memorial chapel built in its place. However, this project was never carried out due to the revolution of 1830. Today the Fontaine Louvois occupies the place where the chapel should have been built on the Louvois square. Very soon after his nephew's death, the king commissioned the architect François Debret to design a new theater for the Opéra on rue Le Peletier, which was completed a year later. During the construction work, the opera and ballet ensembles played in the Théâtre Favart and the Salle Louvois .

The Salle Le Peletier was inaugurated on August 16, 1821 with a mixed program that began with the hymn "Vive Henry VIII" and then included Charles Simon Catel's opera Les Bayadères and the Gardel ballet Le retour de Zéphire . The theater building was planned as a temporary solution made of wood and plaster, but was then used by the Opéra for more than fifty years. Many of the most important operas and ballets of the 19th century were presented on this stage for the first time.

The theater, which was built on an area of ​​14,000 square meters with a length of 104 meters, was very advanced for its time. On February 6, 1822, gas was used for the first time to achieve the stage effects in Nicolas Isouard's opera Aladin ou La lampe merveilleuse . The sloping stage and orchestra pit could be removed to convert the auditorium into a huge hall that could accommodate large balls and other celebrations.

In 1858, the Salle Le Peletier was the setting for one of the most famous games in chess history, the opera game between the American master Paul Morphy (white) and two French aristocrats, the Duke of Braunschweig and Count Isouard. The game was played in the Duke's private box during a performance by Bellini's Norma .

On the night of October 29, 1873, the Salle Le Peletier met the same fate as many of its predecessors: It was destroyed by a fire that raged for 27 hours, allegedly from the theater's innovative gas lighting. In 1875 the new theater, known today as the Palais Garnier , was inaugurated.

World premieres

Operas

Ballets

gallery

  • Interior view and floor plan (1822)

  • Lithograph of the Grande Salle (1854)

  • View from the stage (around 1855)

  • Ballet hall lithograph (1841)

  • Visit of Tsar Alexander II (1867)

  • Fire on October 29, 1873

  • Fire

  • After the fire

literature

  • Patrick Barbier: Opera in Paris, 1800-1850: A Lively History. Amadeus Press, Portland, Oregon 1995, ISBN 0-931340-83-7 .
  • Annegret Fauser ; Mark Everist (Ed.): Music, theater, and cultural transfer. Paris, 1830-1914. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2009, ISBN 978-0-226-23926-2 .
  • Alfred Loewenberg : Annals of Opera 1597-1940 (third edition, revised). Rowman and Littlefield, Totowa, New Jersey 1978, ISBN 0-87471-851-1 .
  • Christopher Curtis Mead: Charles Garnier's Paris Opera. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1991, ISBN 0-262-13275-3 .
  • Spire Pitou: The Paris Opéra: an encyclopedia of operas, ballets, composers, and performers (3 volumes). Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut 1983, ISBN 978-0-686-46036-7 .
  • Nigel Simeone: Paris: a musical gazetteer. Yale University Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-300-08053-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Almanach des spectacles , J.-N. Barba, 1831 p. 23 ( digitized version ).