page_title: Paris in the 18th century
section_title: The Theater
hierarchical_section_title: Paris in the 18th century / Culture / The Theater
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of the Comédie-Française on the rue de Richelieu as originally designed by Victor Louis in 1790. Français&#160;: Intérieur de la Comédie-Française en 1790.
context_page_description: Paris in the 18th century was the second-largest city in Europe, after London, with a population of about 600,000 people. The century saw the construction of Place Vendôme, the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Élysées, the church of Les Invalides, and the Panthéon, and the founding of the Louvre Museum. Paris witnessed the end of the reign of Louis XIV, was the center stage of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, saw the first manned flight, and was the birthplace of high fashion and the modern restaurant.
context_section_description: Theater was an increasingly popular form of entertainment for the Parisians throughout the 18th century. The number of theater seats grew from about four thousand in 1700 to 13,000 in 1789. In 1760, the boulevard du Temple became the main theater street of Paris, with the opening by Nicolet of the Théâtre des Grands Danseurs de Roi, which later became the Théâtre de la Gaîeté. In 1770, the Ambigu-Comique opened on the same street, followed in 1784 by the Théâtre des Élèves de l'Opéra, also known as the Lycée Dramatique. In 1790, the Théâtre des Variétés amusantes, originally located on rue de Bondy, moved to the same neighborhood, to the corner of the rue Richelieu and the Palais-Royal. In 1790. The boulevard du Temple and eventually took the name of the "Boulevard du Crime" because of all of the melodramas that played in the theaters there. Another new theater was opened in 1784 at the northwest corner of the Palais-Royal; it was used first by the company of the Count of the Beaujolais, then by the actress Mademoiselle Montansier. The Comédiens Italiens moved in 1783 to the Salle Favert. On the left bank, the Odéon Theater opened in 1782.
  The most successful Paris playwright was Pierre Beaumarchais who first put on stage the Le Barbier de Séville in 1775 in the Tuileries Palace, performed by the Comédie Française. It was followed by Le Mariage de Figaro, which was accepted for production by the management of the Comédie Française in 1781, but at private reading before the French court the play so shocked King Louis XVI that he forbade its public presentation. Beaumarchais revised the text, moving the action from France to Spain, and, after more changes, it was finally allowed to be staged. It opened at the Théâtre Français on 27 April 1784 and ran for 68 consecutive performances, earning the highest box-office receipts of any French play of the eighteenth century. 
  The most famous of Paris theater companies, the Comédie-Francaise, was located since 1689 on the rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-des-Prés (now 14 rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie). In 1770, because of the decrepitude of their old theater, they were forced to move to the hall of machines of the Tuileries Palace. The hall was too large and not adapted to their style of theater, so they moved back to the left bank to the Odéon Theater. With the arrival of the Revolution, the theater company split in two; the actors who were sympathetic to the monarchy remained in place, but on 3 September 1793, after a performance of a play called Paméla ou la Vertu récompensé by François de Neufchâteau, which the more radical Jacobins felt was counter-revolutionary, the theater was closed. The actors were arrested and barely escaped the guillotine. The actors who were more sympathetic to the Revolution, led by the actor François-Joseph Talma, had installed themselves in a new theater next to the Palais-Royal, built by the architect Victor Louis between 1786 and 1790. They performed first under the name of the Théatre de la Liberté et de la Égalité, then under the name Théatre de la Republique; under the Consulate the scripts of their plays were carefully scrutinized by a Commissaire of the government, to assure they did not contain political messages. The political differences of the actors were eventually put aside, the two troupes rejoined into one company, and established themselves in the theater which is still the home of the Comédie-Française today.
caption: A performance of the Comedie-Française in the late 18th century
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